


The Abyss

by AislingSiobhan



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: AU, Explicit Language, Grooming, M/M, Rape, Slash, Underage Sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-17
Updated: 2013-02-12
Packaged: 2017-11-25 19:13:21
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con, Underage
Chapters: 4
Words: 36,094
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/642108
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AislingSiobhan/pseuds/AislingSiobhan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>[HP/LV] Nietzsche was right: when fighting monsters, Harry should have been more careful not to become one himself. That didn’t matter anymore. It was too late to save himself, yet he could still save the world from Voldemort. But who would save Voldemort from him?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Part I

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Evildime at LJ](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=Evildime+at+LJ).



> This is a fairly old one, but I've been meaning to move some of the more explicit stories over to AO3 for a while anyway... So. Here I am, procrastinating!

**“The Abyss”**

**Disclaimer:** Nothing belongs to me. I make no money from this story, so please don’t sue me. Harry Potter is the property of JK Rowling and Warner Bros, etc.   
**Summary:** [HP/LV] Nietzsche was right: when fighting monsters, Harry should have been more careful not to become one himself. That didn’t matter anymore. It was too late to save himself, yet he could still save the world from Voldemort. But who would save Voldemort from him?  
 **Warnings:** Slash. LV/HP. HP/LV(TMR). AU. Violence. Language. Underage. Chan. Child Abuse. Rape/Implied Rape. Post DH, EWE? Child grooming.   
**Rating:** R/NC-17 SLASH!!   
**A/N:** Once again, we have LJ user EVILDIME to thank for this wonderfully depraved story. Thank you for requesting it! 

_XXX_

“When you stare long enough into the abyss, the abyss stares back into you.” – Nietzsche. 

**Words:** 3,798  
 **The Abyss 1/4**  
July 31st 2008. 

There’s something to be said about trying to cure the world. 

Wasn’t it Nietzsche who once claimed that the cure could sometimes be worse than the disease? That had been what his essay on the abyss had been about, after all. When fighting monsters, Nietzsche advises one to be careful not to create monsters, but Harry supposed it was a little late for that. 

He had been fighting Voldemort since before he was born, if you wanted to get literal about it. Though for the past ten years, he hadn’t actually been fighting. Well, it was less than ten years really. At first Harry had screamed and cried and _struggled_ , determined to fight back and to not let Voldemort win, but it had been no use in the long run. Harry still belonged to the Dark Lord, and there had been no changing that in this timeline. But time was relative. Harry had learnt that in his third year at Hogwarts. It would be a simple enough matter to change the way time had run its course, to save himself and the world, and to defeat Voldemort once and for all. 

The Battle for Hogwarts hadn’t quite gone the way Harry had planned it to. He had intended to die, and then for Neville to kill Nagini and for someone to finish off Voldemort. He had expected Voldemort to just kill him, maybe torture him a little first, but instead the man had captured him, gathered Nagini, and left his Death Eaters alone to amuse themselves with the students. It had been horrible at first, being starved and beaten and raped, and through it all Harry had struggled and bitten and kicked, but he had never begged. Not at first. 

Harry supposed that it was when the begging began that he realized there was truly nothing left of himself to try and save. For he hadn’t been begging for it to end. Instead, he had pleaded with the Dark Lord for _more_ , and harder and faster and deeper. The remembrance of each word struck something within him, and he cringed just thinking about it. He had succumbed, just like Voldemort had promised he would. Broken beneath the touch of Voldemort’s talented fingers and tongue, and at the receiving end of Voldemort’s imaginative punishments. 

Harry smirked to himself. He hadn’t ever been as broken as Voldemort believed him to be. He had grown up with the Dursleys, after all, and had learnt early in life how to please and pretend and submit himself. He could pretend for as long as necessary, spreading his legs and pretending to _want_ it, even as he knew deep down he _liked_ it, while knowing he shouldn’t pretend he didn’t. Crawling at Voldemort’s feet, no matter his age, no matter how long he had been doing it, remained a humiliating experience, but Harry could act like he was unconcerned by it. He could blush prettily, smile shyly up at his Master through his fringe and nibble on his bottom lip as he crawled close enough to take his Master’s cock into his mouth. Years of practise had perfected his art of lying, and he was a master of it now. It was one more skill in his repertoire that he would eventually use to extract his revenge. 

It was probably about five years after the fall of the Ministry that Harry realised he would need more than just a simple Time Turner to successfully carry out his plan of defeating Voldemort. There was so much information he needed, knowledge being power and all that, proper spells that could manipulate the fabric of time, a wand! But at least he had Voldemort’s trust by that point. 

Harry would never have guessed that Voldemort could ever be so dependant on one person. Harry was hardly let out of his sight. They shared the same bed, even when Voldemort wasn’t trying to force intercourse on the younger Wizard, and the Dark Lord actually snuggled in his sleep. 

It had been hard to pretend to be afraid of Voldemort again, especially knowing that Voldemort _knew_ had never really been afraid to begin with, but Harry had pulled it off to the correct degree. It had just been enough to fool Voldemort: him finding Harry reading through the Dark Lord’s private library, Harry prostrating himself, crocodile tears streaming down his cheeks as he whimpered and stammered apologizes, all the while staring rebelliously away from Voldemort and at the books instead. 

Voldemort usually favoured punishments over positive reinforcement. Both different sides to the same coin admittedly, but they had different consequences and caused different reactions. Voldemort had tried burning Harry’s hands once, near the start of their ‘relationship’, trying to encourage Harry not to educate himself, but it hadn’t worked then and it wouldn’t have worked this time either. Instead, the second time Voldemort found Harry stealing books from his library, he had allowed Harry to attend any University course of his choice, as long as he learnt from within the safety of Malfoy Manor, and only if Harry stopped crying when Voldemort took him to bed. 

The tears had been easy to fake. What had been hard was stopping the self-satisfied smirk from crossing his face when Voldemort finally caved in. The guilt trap, as he later learnt it was called, usually went a long way in helping Harry get what he wanted, especially if refusal resulted in Voldemort losing something he wanted. 

The University hadn’t mattered, any of them would do fine. But Harry had picked Psychology as his Degree. It had taken him four years to do the course part time, but he had graduated with honours, specialising in behavioural modification. The past year since then had been spent perfecting every tiny detail of his plan, categorizing the flaws and vulnerabilities he knew Voldemort possessed and figuring out how to use them to his advantage now that he knew _how_. 

The spell had been the only thing he was missing. But now Harry had found it. It was directly in the middle of the newest book Voldemort had added to his library. Harry had watched the man flick through its pages, his green eyes avid and hungry as he listened to each mumbled word that left the Dark Lord’s mouth. He had to have a look at that book! Especially once he heard the word “ **Vorago** ” mentioned. It had been mentioned in another of Voldemort’s books, fleetingly, tantalisingly, but Harry knew that it was the spell he needed. There would be no other spell that could possibly achieve the same results as the **Vorago** could. 

He was so close. 

It wouldn’t be hard to obtain a wand. Voldemort even let Harry use his while they were alone together, and when the Dark Lord left he generally left Harry in the care of his stupider Death Eaters (possibly fearing that his more dangerous ones were perhaps too dangerous to leave with his defenceless pet). It wouldn’t be hard to steal a wand off of one of those imbecilic minions. 

He just needed to know how to perform that spell. 

And there it was, right in front of him. Voldemort was handing him the book. Harry reached out hesitantly, keeping up his act and he licked his lips with anticipation. The spell was in these pages. Once he was allowed to read the book for the first time, he was given unspoken permission to view the same book whenever he wanted. He’d have all the time he needed to learn the spell, just as soon as the book was in his hands. 

Voldemort stopped, pulling the book out of reach, and Harry actually groaned in disappointment. “Now, pet,” he chastised lightly, “Patience is a virtue. I’ve seen how you’ve been eyeing this text. Since it is your birthday today, and because I have to go away for a few days on business, I’m giving you an extra special treat.” 

There it was again. The book. Just an inch away from his fingers, and Harry reached up after a nod from the Dark Lord and plucked the book gently from pale, spidery fingers. 

“Enjoy it, pet.”

“I will, Master.” Harry breathed, looking up at him with wide eyes. “Thank you,” he added softly. 

Voldemort continued to stare down at him, smirking at the form of the man on his knees before him, and Harry realized what he was waiting for. He put the book down beside him, tracing the cover lovingly with the fingers of one hand, while the other hand reached up to undo Voldemort’s trousers. 

“Thank you, Master,” he said again, his face pressed to Voldemort’s crotch and his breath ghosting lightly against the elder man’s erection. “Thank you,” he mumbled as he took the tip of Voldemort’s length into his mouth, his tongue laving the head and tasting the pre-come that gathered at the slit. ‘Thank you, Master’ his actions spoke for him as Harry bobbed his head in time with Voldemort’s thrusts, trying to ignore the hand that had tangled in his hair and was forcing his face closer to the Dark Lord’s groin, holding him in place as the thrusting sped up, and then Voldemort was coming, and Harry swallowed as he had been trained to do and he continued to lick and suck lightly until Voldemort’s grip on his hair became to painful to ignore and he pulled back. He panted lightly, his own cock straining within his trousers and the taste of _Voldemort_ on his tongue. 

“Thank you,” he added softly once more, before reaching up to redress his Master. He sat back on his knees, the bulge in his pants obvious to anyone looking, and Voldemort looked down on it with pleased red eyes. 

“Do not touch yourself. If you are good, I shall attend to you when I return.” 

Voldemort might not come back for weeks at a time, but Harry knew better than to pleasure himself while any of Voldemort’s servants were in the room (as there would be if Voldemort was away). To many of the Death Eaters, being Voldemort’s ‘personal’ whore was just a title. You were still a whore, and regardless of the fact that they were punished terribly, there was always at least one who would try and fuck Harry anyway. 

Harry lowered his eyes meekly, the blush on his cheeks fading slightly as his erection had already begun to ebb. 

“Yes, Master,” he whispered. And to show he was serious, he reached out for the book and began to read. Voldemort watched him silently for a moment before nodding his head. He turned on his heel and glided towards the door of the Master Suit. Harry watched him, his eyes bright and his mouth twisted into a mockery of a smile, as his fingers splayed over the open page of the book, the words of the **Vorago** spell spread out across the parchment. 

A Death Eater entered the room as Voldemort left, and Harry glanced up briefly to check who it was. Harry knew him. Anthony Moore. The man was a few years younger than Harry, much less clever and a little slow on his feet. If Harry could learn the spell before Voldemort came back, Anthony was the best person to have in the room while he performed it. 

This was it.

It was too late to save him. He couldn’t be saved, not now, not anymore. And this world had already gone to Hell, so there was nothing left to do for it either. But there were other worlds out there, other possible timelines where Harry hadn’t lost the Battle for Hogwarts, and maybe where Voldemort had never existed? Harry hoped to prove his theory right. If he went back far enough he could change the world, he could cure it. Despite Nietzsche’s cautions there couldn’t possibly be a cure worse than the disease that was Voldemort. 

Harry just had to get Tom Riddle while he was young. Then he’d save the world. 

_XXX_

August 5th 2008. 

It had been almost a week since Voldemort had left him alone with Anthony. The Death Eater had pretty much let Harry read his book in peace; only interrupting him when the house elf arrived with food or when he thought Harry should sleep so as to keep up his strength with which to please Voldemort. Harry had rolled his eyes, but had listened to what he was told. He was supposed to be the perfect submissive pet, and he could pretend for a day or two longer. It was almost time. He had been so close to being ready. 

He had been reading those two pages of the book non-stop since Voldemort’s departure, memorizing the incantation and muttering it out loud under his breath. He had used his toothbrush as a replacement for his wand, waving it about in the bathroom out of Anthony’s sight as he tried to pin down the correct wand movement. The moment he had a wand he had to do the spell straight away. There would be no time for practising later and he wouldn’t risk forgetting any of the words. 

Voldemort couldn’t be gone much longer, Harry knew. The Dark Lord never left for more than a week without at least stopping by for a few hours and a handful of hurried shags before he left again. 

Now. He had to do it now. 

Anthony Moore entered the bedroom, a frown on his face. By this time Harry was usually dressed and kneeling by the Dark Lord’s desk. But Anthony hadn’t seen him in the study, or the en suit bathroom, and the man certainly wouldn’t have left the Dark Lord’s private suit of rooms. The bedroom was the only room left unchecked. 

When Anthony peeked inside, it appeared empty. But it couldn’t be, Harry had to be in there somewhere. The sudden overwhelming terror he felt at the thought that he might have lost Harry, the Dark Lord’s favoured pet, or allowed him to be kidnapped or, Merlin forbid, to escape overrode his healthy desire to keep out of his Lord’s most private room. 

He entered slowly, his wand raised, and he didn’t notice Harry slipping out from behind the narrow space between the wardrobe and the wall. When Anthony was in the room, Harry slammed the door shut and locked it, throwing himself forward a second later to rugby tackle the Death Eater to the floor. As a child Harry had been very malnourished, and his first few years with Voldemort hadn’t exactly ensured that he ate well, so while he was older than Anthony, he was a lot slimmer and shorter. 

It was easy for Moore to flip Harry off of him, knocking the man across the room and away. But by then, Harry had already gripped onto Anthony’s wand, ripping it from the man’s hand, and when he stood he pointed the thin stick of wood at the Death Eater’s heart. 

“Move, and I’ll kill you.” He promised softly. He didn’t have much cause to speak to anyone, but when he did talk it was softly or quietly or submissively, unless he was shouting beneath Voldemort, loud and excited and screaming, just as he knew Voldemort liked him to be. There was a raspy quality to his voice, probably left over from some unhealed damage Harry had done to his throat during the first few torture sessions Voldemort had put him through, before he had learnt that he got more of a reaction out of the Dark Lord by being quite than he did by screaming. 

When Anthony was bound and gagged, Harry left the bedroom. He used the other man’s wand to unlock Voldemort’s desk, easily unweaving the wards that he had watched Voldemort erect and dispel time and time again. Only someone with a Dark Mark could alter the wards though, but using the wand belonging to a Death Eater worked just as well. 

He emptied the draws onto the floor, digging through their contents until he found what he wanted. He picked up his own wand; caressing the rough tip and the smooth handle reverently, basking in the feeling of warmth filling his very being as his fingers closed around the wood. It had been sometime since Voldemort allowed him to practise magic. They only ever did it when Harry was showing signs of wandless, uncontrollable, bursts of magic. A Healer had informed Voldemort that it was Harry’s body’s way of making sure that his magic didn’t build up enough to hurt him physically while making sure that Harry also didn’t lose his magic from lack of use. 

He turned to face the open door of the bedroom, and met Anthony’s terrified eyes with his own calmer ones. “I am sorry that you’ll be punished, and probably killed. But if it makes you feel better, where I’m going, I’ll make it so that this never happened.” There was a small backpack shoved underneath the chair at the desk, and Harry grabbed hold of it tightly in his free hand. The textbook he had found the **Vorago** spell in was packed inside, along with a few changes of clothing and what little gold he had found lying around or had saved up from _that month_ seven years ago when Voldemort felt the need to ‘tip him’ for his services. 

“ **Transporto mihi in Vorago, in inritus, ut vicis pro vices venit in existence. Transporto mihi ut annus 1930.** ” He chanted the words with his eyes closed, one hand on his bag and the other clenched around his wand. 

Anthony was shouting in the background, his words muffled by the sock Harry had shoved in his mouth, but he was probably trying to beg for mercy or dissuade Harry from his current course of action, or something equally as tedious. Harry ignored him, and repeated once more as the book had told him to, the words, “ **Transporto mihi in Vorago, in inritus, ut vicis pro vices venit in existence. Transporto mihi ut annus 1930.** ”

There was a noise, uncomfortably loud, like the tide crashing against the shore and it seemed to fill up the entire room. Harry knew he was hearing the blood rushing through his ears, and not the actual ocean, and he raised his hands to press over his ears, his possessions still clutched tightly in both fists. His eyes were squeezed closed, protecting himself from the brilliance of the light that had suddenly flooded the room. 

He was on his knees, he realized, but he didn’t remember falling onto them. Perhaps Voldemort had forced him down, the way he used to have to? Harry opened his mouth: it was almost instinctual. He had grown used to his knees meeting the floor just before Voldemort’s cock was at his lips, down his throat, and he was choking and sucking and swallowing against his will. But there was nothing. No hands on the back of his head, and nothing against his mouth. He even flicked his tongue out quickly, but there was nothing there, not even the brush of robes that had yet to be unfastened.

He had closed his eyes for a reason, but he couldn’t seem to make his brain remember _why_. There had been light… had Voldemort cursed him again? 

His eyes opened slowly, squinting at first before widening as he realized that he was no longer inside Malfoy Manor. Harry hadn’t left that place in nine years, not since Voldemort had dragged him to the Ministry to show off his new prize, half naked and collared like an animal, dragged along by the Dark Lord on a lead, and Harry had tried to escape. He had killed the new Minister for Magic first though. Harry hadn’t liked Pius Thicknesse, and killing the man had almost made Harry feel comforted, as if that death washed away all of the humiliation and pain and _terror_ Harry had suffered in that past year. Voldemort had punished him terribly once they were back within the Manor, and no matter whom Harry had managed to kill that day, it wasn’t worth what Voldemort put him through. But Harry never regretted trying to escape. Instead, he had learnt to pretend to be broken, to weaken Voldemort’s guard, and plan his real escape. 

And here it was. Every breath he took for the last decade had been all for this moment. 

Harry looked around in awe. Wide green eyes took in his surroundings with glee and slight wariness. He was in the middle of nowhere, it seemed. On all sides, tall trees stood and swamped the bushes and hedges that grew at their bases, flowers swayed lightly in the breeze and they smelt wonderful. Harry took in a deep breath, and held it, savouring the smells that were unique to the outdoors. No freshening charm Voldemort had ever cast could compare to the real deal. Fake windows and magical views paled in light of this view! It was everywhere: beauty, and air, and life, and _freedom_.

Harry was free. 

That thought scared him slightly. He was excited by his freedom, and pleased that his plan had worked out so far, after all this was what he had wanted for years. It felt like his whole life had been spent as Voldemort’s prisoner, and now he was free to make his own way, to live his own life. But how? He had no experience living for himself, and he could barely remember what it was like to fend for himself, to find food and spend money and wear clothes that he picked out. Simple things like setting his own bedtime and sleeping alone at night made him wonder how well his plan could really turn out. 

But he wouldn’t change his mind. He had thought long and hard about this, planned everything minutely, questioned himself time and again, and he was certain. There were things he had to do before he could start the plan, like find Tom, find somewhere to live, find a job even! But he would do those things because he needed to. He might not be qualified, but he could pretend to be. He knew spells that hadn’t even been invented yet, and he could work as a Muggle psychologist when the right _persuasive_ techniques were applied if he wanted to, both of those would have to count for something. 

He would do this. 

Whatever fear he felt, the doubts he had, they were inconsequential. All that mattered was this. He had to do this. It was what he was born to do, what he had been preparing himself to do. 

He was going to defeat Voldemort. Once and for all. 

**XXX**


	2. Part II

**Words:** 14,016  
 **The Abyss 2/4**  
December 31st 1930. 4 years old.

The building was square and grim looking. Its surroundings were bare, no trees or statues or even people in sight. The courtyard outside of the building was tucked away behind high railings, and affixed to the entrance gate was a sign reading, “Stockwell Orphanage”.1 Harry kept watch over the building, holding a pair of Omnioculars up to his eyes. They weren’t as high tech as the pair he had used in his Fourth Year, but to be fair he was approximately 50 years in the past! They did the job well enough, enabling him to see through the window of the Orphanage’s canteen area. 

There were four boys, one of them very young and the other three all much older and bigger. They were bullying the younger boy. Harry turned the settings on the Omnioculars, trying to get a closer look at what they were saying. There was shoving involved. There always was, Harry knew from his own experiences with Dudley, and no doubt, there was name-calling. But Harry needed to be sure, needed to know this was the right boy. There were plenty of bullies in the orphanage, and Harry had already made the mistake of introducing himself to one of them, thinking him to be Tom. An ‘ **Obliviate** ’ had cleared up the issue, but still, he would be certain this time. 

“Freak!” Harry saw one of the boy’s say, green eyes narrowing as he tried to lip-read another boy’s response. 

“Freak!” That one said. Followed by the third bully repeating the word. 

Then he saw what he had been waiting for. The child’s hands clenched at his side, his eyes teared up, and a long crack appeared in the wall behind the eldest bully’s head. Accidental magic! Harry smirked to himself as he lowered the Omnioculars. There had only ever been one magical child taken from Tom’s London orphanage, and so finally he had found the boy he was looking for. 

He tucked the Omnioculars into the pocket of his suit trousers, and picked the jacket up off of the floor where he had thrown it. It was cold out, and it was easy enough to cast a warming charm over himself. He had felt a bit silly dressed so formally. Unfortunately, the Institution where he had forcefully acquired a job insisted that its therapists dress like penguins. Whatever had happened to good old-fashioned white coats? 

Today was Tom Riddle’s fourth birthday, if Harry’s memory served him right. Truthfully, this child didn’t look much older than that. The first one Harry had picked had looked a little too old, but, well, mistakes were made. 

Harry pulled a package from his other pocket and waved his wand, returning it to its rightful size. It was a box, about the size of a book, and it was wrapped in colourful paper. Slytherin green paper, because Harry appreciated the irony. 

He had studied about this, about people like him, and he had specialized in behavioural modification and for the past two weeks he had worked with victims who had lived through what he was planning to do. Perhaps seeing the effects of his plan on other people should have made him rethink things through, but it didn’t. It only instilled the need he had to do things _right_. He had to set the behavioural trap correctly, to offer Tom natural reinforcers2 that would easily be accepted, but could not be rejected without Tom first modifying his behaviour. Those _others_ , the ones who had created Harry’s patients, had done something wrong, something Harry would have to avoid doing. Harry would have to make sure to bait Tom completely, correctly; to lure him in, and once trapped, he wasn’t ever letting go. 

Originally he had planned to kill Tom. Killing Tom would rid the world of him, rid the world of Voldemort, but it would never repay Harry for the pain and humiliation he had suffered through for a decade. The suffocating terror he had felt for those first few years, falling asleep praying for death only to wake up alive and still a prisoner; that would never be forgotten by him, could never be erased. Tom’s death wouldn’t go far in making _that_ up to Harry. There would have to be more. There needed to be a better punishment, a worse fate in store for Lord Voldemort, if there were any hope of Harry ever feeling clean again. 

He needed absolution: for his capture, for his failure to defeat Voldemort sooner, for his compliance with his own treatment. Should he have tried harder to escape? Maybe killed Voldemort in his sleep, despite knowing the man still had two Horcruxes left? Harry wasn’t a Horcrux anymore. Voldemort had removed the soul fragment himself after Harry’s attempted escape in the Ministry, but there was still Nagini. Harry had always comforted himself with the thought that one day Nagini would have to die, and then – and then finally – he could smother Voldemort while he slept. She didn’t die. Apparently the Horcrux would keep her alive for as long as Voldemort lived. After learning that, Harry had thrown all thoughts of killing Voldemort out of the mental window. Death, while Voldemort’s biggest fear, was too good for him. 

“An eye for an eye, after all,” Harry whispered to himself as he slowly walked down the hill towards the Orphanage. 

He didn’t think he was a bad person. He just wanted to do what was right. But hadn’t he once read somewhere that the worst killers, the worst men, were the ones who killed in the name of good? Harry scoffed lightly at his own thoughts. What did it matter? He was going to Hell anyway, he knew. His rape and imprisonment hadn’t been his fault, but the fact that he had failed himself, his friends, and his world at the Battle for Hogwarts was. He should have killed himself those first few days at Malfoy Manor, when he had the chance, destroyed the Horcrux himself, or even killed Nagini! But he hadn’t. He had been weak and afraid, shaking terribly he remembered, but he had tried to look strong and at first he had refused to scream. But he was still a disappointment. 

Harry told himself it was about saving the world as he made his way towards the curled up form at the base of the hill. Watery blue eyes looked up at him, the gaunt face pale and blotchy from crying, and Harry didn’t feel so much as a pang of sympathy for the poor creature. It wasn’t about saving the world, he finally admitted to himself. Though it would be a nice bonus. And it had never been about saving himself, because what was worth saving? 

No. This was about revenge. 

_XXX_

Tom didn’t look up as he made his way from the food queue to the table at the very back of the canteen where he always sat. The table was mouldy and dirty, but it was his, because no one else wanted it. Tom always sat there alone, which suited him just fine, and it was right beside the door to the courtyard and the rack where they were meant to leave their empty trays and dishes. The problem wasn’t leaving the canteen; what troubled Tom was how hard it was to get his food and get to his table without someone tripping him or shoving him or taunting him. 

For all of his life Tom had lived at Stockwell Orphanage. He was born here, Mrs. Cole had told him, moments before his mother had died. She had just enough time to name him apparently, before she had abandoned him to this hell. 

It wasn’t that Stockwell was a bad place to live. Mrs. Cole and Martha and the others were all very nice, and lots of children got adopted on a regular basis, and they even had their own rooms when they reached the age of ten, which was great because each room had a real iron bed, a wardrobe and a chair. The Orphanage was always clean as well, and there were maids to pick up after the children, even though Tom strived to keep his section of his shared room neat without being asked. Everyone loved living in Stockwell Orphanage, at least the ones who didn’t remember any other way to live. Those whose parents had died and left them, those who had lives before coming to Hell, they didn’t like it all that much. But they were better off than Tom. At least the others liked those children. 

No one was ever going to adopt Tom. He was never given new things, like blankets and clothes, as he was always told there wasn’t enough to go around. But the others his age all got new shoes and Tom was given a pair two sizes too big for him that one of the older boys had grown out of! Mrs. Cole didn’t like him much; Tom knew that. He was young, not stupid. It was because Mrs. Cole didn’t like him that the other children got away with destroying the things Tom did have and being so cruel to him all of the ti-

“Ouch!” Tom cried. He had tripped over someone’s leg, and landed hard on the stone floor. He didn’t look up to see who had purposely tripped him, choosing instead to look at the mess he had made of his breakfast. 

“Happy birthday, freak.” Eric Whalley said, smirking. He was only two years older than Tom, but he was friendly with some of the bigger boys so he got away with bullying an awful lot. 

Mathew Rogers and Rickson Jenson both grinned down at him, mouths wide with cruel smiles. 

“Oh, is it the freak’s birthday today?” Mathew sneered, knowing full well that it was. Tom was the only child in the orphanage whose birthday wasn’t celebrated. Last year, Martha had tried to throw him a party, but no one had come, so now they just didn’t bother with him anymore. 

Rick was almost 14. Soon he would have to leave Stockwell, to go find a real job and leave Tom behind. Mathew wasn’t as old, but Tom would only have to wait two more years until they were both gone. But he knew there would be others, other bullies, and he needed to toughen up if he was to survive them. 

For the first time in two years, since they had started to notice the strange things that happened around Tom and since the bullying began, Tom tried to stand up for himself. “I’m not a freak.” His words were barely more than a whisper. 

“Yes you are,” Rick said, giving Tom a shove as the boy tried to get to his feet. Tom fell onto his porridge, slipping onto his bum. “Freak!”

“Freak! Freak!” The other two copied. 

“Of course you’re a freak. No one loves you, no one wants you, you didn’t even get a birthday card from Martha, and we all know she’s the only one who can stomach you! You’re an ugly, stupid freak and-” And that was all Tom could bare to listen to. Without cleaning up his spilt breakfast, he ran towards his table and out through the door beside it. 

When he was in the courtyard, he kept running, right up to the railing that surrounded the building and its grounds. There was a hole at the back, beneath the shadow of a tall hill that hid the other houses in the area from view. Tom was still small enough to wriggle under the fence, fitting his body into the burrow dug by a fox or a badger or some other cornered animal. Obviously, the animal must have been escaping from one of the children, because why would it have wanted to dig its way _in_? 

Tom threw himself down at the base of the hill, leaning against the trunk of the willow tree that grew there. If anyone were to look for him, they’d be able to see him just fine, which meant that he wouldn’t get in trouble for disappearing and so he wouldn’t be punished, though he probably would have to clean the canteen tonight because of the mess he made. It hadn’t been his fault, but he always got the blame and there was no point trying to argue with that. He had tried once, and the lights had flickered on and off until Mrs. Cole had started crying and just slapped him round the face. Tom hadn’t tried to argue with her since. 

He turned his head to the side when he heard footsteps. It was strange for someone to actually come after him, unless they were telling him to go to bed. He looked up, watery blue eyes meeting emerald green orbs that were firmly fixed on his blotchy face. Tom reached up to rub at his eyes, brushing away the tears, as the stranger looked him over. 

“Can I help you?” Tom whispered. 

“I heard it was your birthday,” Harry said softly. He lowered himself down to the ground, moving slowly so as to give Tom time to get up and move away if he wanted to. Tom stayed where he was, and he didn’t even flinch. His eyes widened though, shock covering his face, and Harry smirked at the child’s reaction. It seemed Tom wasn’t quite as cynical and cruel as he had been when Dumbledore had first found the boy: he wasn’t even on his way to becoming the terrifying child Harry remembered Tom to be. Good, Harry thought. He knew it had been a good idea to catch Tom young. 

“How did you know that?” Tom gasped. 

“Oh,” Harry said with a shrug, handing over the carefully wrapped present, “I’ve been to the orphanage a few times.” That was the truth at least, it was how he had run into Eric something-or-other, the boy he had mistaken for Tom. “That’s for you.” He nudged the present with his hand, shoving it across Tom’s lap where it had fallen. 

Tom finally picked it up, turning it over in his hands carefully. “For me? Really?” He sounded so pitiful, yet so hopeful, that Harry couldn’t help but allow his lips to twitch slightly. He nodded, and Tom’s whole face lit up. He ripped off the wrapping paper, making no comment on the colour, but that had been for Harry’s benefit after all. “The Catcher in the Rye”, Tom read the title of the book, very slowly pronouncing his words and Harry’s grin widened. 

He had known Tom Riddle was clever. He had been the best and brightest student Hogwarts had ever seen, but to be able to read so clearly at the age of 4! It was stunning. Harry had contemplated buying a children’s book, but they were all so dull and simple and he didn’t think it would entice Tom in anyway at all. Even if Tom hadn’t been able to read The Catcher by himself, after a few more visits the boy would probably have accepted Harry’s offer to read it to him. In exchange for more gifts, of course. 

“I want you to read it, Tom. It’ll be good for you.” Harry stood up then, running his hand quickly through Tom’s dark hair. “You’ll see that bad things happen to young boys who lie.” And with that Harry walked away. 

Tom watched the man leave, his eyes narrowing slightly as they settled back on the book. He wasn’t a liar, so why would that man said that to him? He had been to the orphanage though, Tom remembered with a sniffle. They had probably told the stranger all sorts of horrible things about him. If the stranger was looking to adopt someone, he definitely wasn’t going to choose Tom! So it didn’t matter that the man thought he was a liar.

But then why had he given Tom the book? It was Tom’s first birthday present, his first anything actually that had been solely his and not second hand. The man, whose name Tom didn’t even know, had given the gift to him instead of all the other boys and girls he could have chosen at Stockwell. Maybe, Tom allowed himself to hope. Maybe Rick was wrong, and someone _did_ want him? 

_XXX_

January 28th 1931.

Tom was crying at the base of the hill again. Harry watched him in silence, biting his bottom lip as he thought things through one last time. It had been almost a month since he had last seen Tom face-to-face, though he had been watching the boy in secret. He had another copy of The Catcher in the Rye in his pocket, because he knew Tom hadn’t finished reading it yet and some of the older boys had burnt the book three days ago. Tom hadn’t stopped crying since. 

Harry hadn’t wanted to come on too strong. It was what scared most people off. Everything had to be timed right, everything needed to be perfect. Tom had no parents to befriend, there was no legitimate reason to seek Tom out at the orphanage except to adopt him, and Harry wasn’t going to do that! 

He had stayed away for a month, but now he felt it was time to intervene in Tom’s life again. 

“Why is it, every time I see you, you are crying?” Harry asked teasingly, sitting himself on the ground beside the child, his back pressed to the willow tree’s trunk. “Is my face ugly or something?” 

Tom’s head snapped up, his mouth open in shock before a smile lit up his face. “You came back!” Tom shouted. “You really came back! I knew you would. None of the others believed me, and they took my book, but I knew you’d come back.”

“Here,” Harry said, handing him the replacement copy of The Catcher. “I thought something like this might happen. Children are cruel, Tom, but they grow up eventually. You just have to remember that. Anyway, I’ll tell you how it ends. The boy is a pathological liar, he can’t help himself, and he ends up in an Institution like where I work talking to doctors about why he lies.”

“You’re a doctor?” Tom asked quietly, shifting away. “I’m not a liar. Even if they said I am, I’m not!” Tom pleaded, begging Harry to understand. He didn’t want to go to an Institution. Only bad boys went there, and he wasn’t bad, he wasn’t. He wasn’t!

“Good. I don’t like liars, Tom.” It was hypocritical of him, considering, but it was part of the role he had to play. Lying was a necessary evil if Harry was going to get Tom to trust him. “How much of the book did you read?”

“I was half way through. I share a room, and I didn’t want any of the others to know I had the book. Sometimes,” Tom’s voice had dropped to below a whisper, and Harry had to strain his ears to hear. “Sometimes, when my clothes don’t fit right, I can make them shrink.” He looked up quickly, trying to gauge Harry’s reaction, but the man stared down at him with a blank face. “Mrs. Cole thinks I’m stealing, but I’m not! They’d think I stole the book too. But I told them about you, Eric Whalley and Rickson Jenson anyway, because they kept saying that no one would want me, or want to be near me. You were. You do, right?”

“Well that depends on you, Tom. If you’re a good boy, then yes, I’ll want you very much.” Harry spoke slowly, keeping his face blank, “but I don’t like boys who do bad things.” 

“I won’t be bad, I promise!” Tom swore, jumping to his feet and lacing his fingers in front of his chest like he was praying. “But sometimes things just happen. I can’t help it, I swear I don’t mean to do it.” 

“I see.” Harry drawled, getting to his feet as well. “Hmm, those shoes look a little big for you. I suppose we should get you a new pair?” Tom turned his head, gaping at Harry as if the man were crazy. “What? If I’m your friend, it wasn’t very friendly of me to disappear for a month, now was it? You have to let me make it up to you!”

“What am I gonna tell Mrs. Cole?” Tom whispered, his eyes darting around warily. 

“Well I suppose I’ll have to introduce myself. Maybe we could stretch the truth a little, tell her I’m a cousin?”

“Lying is wrong,” Tom told him with narrowed eyes. 

“Yes, it is.” Harry smiled. “But so is stealing. Do you want her to think you stole, Tom? I’m going to buy you some shoes either way. You deserve them.” Tom’s face lit up again at the word ‘deserve’: he had never been told he deserved anything other than a beating in his life. 

“Ok, we’ll think of something to tell her.” He bit his bottom lip. “There’s a charity store that sells shoes over that way,” Tom said, pointing over the hill. 

“I was thinking of taking a train to London proper.” Harry waited to see how far he could stretch this second meeting with Tom. Any well-adjusted child would refuse to go so far away with a stranger, but an abused child? Harry supposed at Tom’s age even he would have been willing to run away from Privet Drive with the first person who was kind to him. But would Tom? “I needed to get a few things for myself anyway. Are you even allowed to go into London?”

Tom thought about it for a moment. “Of course. They don’t care what we do as long as we’re back for supper and bedtime. But…” He bit his lip again, and Harry worried for a moment that Tom would refuse to go further than Vauxhall Road, but then Tom spoke again. “All of the shops in London are expensive, sir. You don’t need to waste good money on me.”

“And why is that?” Harry asked, already knowing what Tom would say. 

Harry had read Simon’s works, while he had been studying.4 He knew that the first steps to ensuring that psychological manipulation was effective was knowing what your chosen victim’s vulnerabilities were, and having the ruthlessness necessary to exploit them or harm your victim if needed. Controlling aggressive behaviour was also important, and Harry had promised himself that no matter what Tom did, and no matter how angry Tom made him, or how much Tom reminded him of Voldemort, Harry would not hurt the child. 

Not yet. 

And anyway positive reinforcement is superior to punishment in altering behaviour,5 or so he had learnt. 

Tom scuffed the ground with the toe of one shoe. He mumbled, “I’m a freak, and I’m ugly and stupid and don’t deserve nice things.”

Harry reached out, slowly, giving Tom plenty of time to move out of reach, and cupped the boy’s chin. “You are not ugly. In fact, I’d say you’ll be a rather beautiful boy when you’re older. And stupid? Certainly not! After all, you read half of Sallinger’s masterpiece without help, and I bet you understood every word? You are not a freak, Tom. You are… different. But, just like all little boys, you do deserve nice things. I promise you that.” 

Harry was wary about telling Tom he was ‘special’. Tom enjoyed knowing he was different to everyone else, better than them. But Harry would wait until they knew each other better before dropping the bombshell that was magic onto the boy. If Tom knew sooner that he wasn’t the only one who could do ‘things’ then maybe when the time for Hogwarts came he wouldn’t believe he was so much better than everyone else. 

“Now, shall we go to London, or will Vauxhall do?” 

Tom offered him a shy grin, his young face full of trust as he looked up at Harry. “London please, sir?” He said.

“London it is, Tom,” Harry replied with a chuckled. He threw an arm out, dropping it around Tom’s shoulders and pulling the boy in for a quick but firm hug. “The name’s Harry, by the way.” 

Tom tensed a little at first, but when Harry didn’t move his arm after a minute, Tom relaxed. They walked to the underground, Harry’s arm around Tom’s shoulders, bent over slightly so that he could actually reach the child, and Tom practically melted into the adult’s side the longer the touch continued for. 

Every now and then, Tom would smile up at Harry shyly, almost as if he were checking that Harry was really there. In one of Tom’s hands, he held onto The Catcher, and the other hand would come up to squeeze Harry’s fingers cautiously before tucking itself into Tom’s trouser pocket. Harry smirked when the boy wasn’t looking, making a show of pulling his arm back, only for Tom to reach up and grab his fingers again, holding tight long enough for Harry to settle his arm around Tom’s neck once more. The child’s first hug, and already Tom was far too attached for his own good. 

Harry almost chuckled out loud, but he refrained. He did allow himself another smirk though. 

This was going to be too easy. 

_XXX_

December 31st 1931. 5 years old. 

“Harry?” Tom asked softly. 

The elder Wizard looked down at the boy, slowly lowering the book he was reading. This was the first time Tom had come to his flat, a year after they had first met, and while Harry had immediately sat down and started to read Tom just stood in the doorway nervously. 

“What if I dirty something?” He asked, wringing his hands in front of his stomach. 

“You won’t. And anyway,” Harry said teasingly, “You have to come inside if you’re to get your birthday present. I left it in the bedroom, through there.” He pointed at the only other door in the room. 

Harry’s flat was small and pokey but it was all he could afford before he ‘acquired’ his job. He was planning to save what money he didn’t spend on Tom and buy a bigger place for after the boy started Hogwarts. His plan should be almost complete by then, and when that happened Harry had betted Tom would _demand_ to sleep over. It was a one bedroom, situated just off of the living room, which was right as you came in the front door. The bathroom was on the other side of the bedroom, and awkwardly so was the kitchen. It was a pain in the arse to cook food and have to carry it through the bedroom so you could eat at a table. So instead, Harry had used a part of his second pay cheque (the first spent paying off his flat) to buy a nice dressing table. He ate his dinner on that most nights now, when he wasn’t eating out with Tom. 

Harry leant back on the sofa, raising “The Picture of Dorian Grey” over his head so he could read it without having to strain his neck. He got two pages read before he heard a bang and a gasp from the bedroom. 

“Oops,” Harry mock sighed, “should have put those away first.” He lowered the book and marked the page before dropping it onto the sofa. 

Harry watched Tom from the doorway silently. It was rather amusing, though Harry had expected it. Tom had been a thief in his original timeline, and while he didn’t think Tom would take anything from him, there was no doubt that the boy would have had a snoop through his things. Which, actually, was what Harry had been counting on. He had left the photos out purposely, turned upside down and carefully slotted halfway underneath Harry’s copy of The Catcher. Harry had brought a camera out with them about a month ago, taking photos of Tom while he scowled in the park, and Tom had obviously wanted to see if Harry had kept the photos of him. 

“I didn’t mean to! I didn’t know they weren’t-” He trailed off, dropping his eyes to the carpet before running the back of his hand over his nose. “Why do you have those?” The child asked, not yet old enough to be disgusted by the images. 

“This one,” Harry lifted the first photograph and held it out for Tom to see. A part of Tom knew he shouldn’t look, but he looked anyway, because Harry wanted him to. If Tom was any older this probably would have been a lot harder: he would have heard adults talking, would have probably known children at the orphanage who had been sexually abused by parents or foster parents, (had Tom actually spoke to the other children at Stockwell), or he might have even read about it. But as it was, the five-year-old listened trustingly as Harry lied to him. “Is my friends daughter. Her name is Anna.” 

( **warning: child porn** )6

The picture was of a little girl, who couldn’t have been more then six or seven. She was lying back on a bed with her legs spread and both of her hands pressed to her chest, hiding where her breasts would be once she had some. 

“Here’s another one,” Harry told him, pulling out a second image. It was ‘Anna’ again, but this time there was a man lying on top of her, and Anna had her face turned towards the camera, her eyes squeezed closed in pain. “She looks like she’s enjoying herself,” Harry mused. “Oh, this is Jason! He’s my last neighbour’s son. He’s adorable don’t you think?”

Harry held the photo out and Tom took it. The boy must have been about three, and he was posed on his knees with his mouth open. Right at the edge of the photo, Tom could see someone else, someone older, with his trousers down.

( **warning ends** )

“NO!” He shouted suddenly, shoving the photo back at Harry. “That’s wrong.” 

Harry gathered the remaining four photographs off of the bed, knowing that Tom had already looked through them, and put them and the one’s of ‘Anna’ back under the book on the vanity table. “What’s wrong? The photographs? That’s perfectly normal, Tom. It’s how children tell adults they love them. See, that’s Jason’s father.” Harry waved the photo Tom had thrown at him, the only one he hadn’t put away. 

“But he’s a man.” Tom said with gritted teeth. 

“What? Only mothers can love their sons?” Harry clenched his fists for a second, before saying, “I’ll have you know my father loved me very much.” 

Tom looked up at him, his eyes narrowed and his forehead creased as he thought about what Harry had said. “The nuns that come to the orphanage sometimes told us that it’s a sin to love another man.” 

“But Jason’s a boy.” Harry said slowly, as if expecting Tom to not understand him. 

Tom scowled at him. “I know that! But he’ll be a man when he grows up. So it’s wrong.” He crossed his arms over his chest, turning his face away from the photograph Harry still held. “I don’t want to see it anymore.”

Harry nodded slowly, but put the photo away like he was asked. “You’re over intellectualising everything, Tom.”7 Tom’s forehead creased, and Harry chuckled as he realised that Tom hadn’t understood the word. “It means you’re too clever for your own good. There are bad people out there who will prey on that. But anyway, did you like your present?” 

Tom allowed a soft smile to settle on his face. He moved over to Harry and sat on the edge of the bed beside his older friend. He picked up the photo album from the bed, his fingers caressing the soft leather cover. “It must have been expensive.” Tom mused. 

No matter how many new things he received from Harry, he always seemed to expect to be given something cheap or second hand the next time they met. When Tom had stopped protesting and had just started to take the gifts when given, Harry had realised that Tom was warming up to him. 

“It was expensive.” Harry smiled, “but you deserve it. I thought you could put some photos of your friends in there.” Harry opened the cover of the album, and Tom gasped as the man ran his fingers first down the palm of Tom’s hand. “I put some photos of us in there.” There were the photos from that day in the park, and Harry chuckled at the scowl in every one of Tom’s photos. He had taken one of himself when he had gotten home and added that to the album as well. 

Tom turned the page, and gasped again. “This is you?” He asked quietly, drawing his finger slowly down the length of the image of a fully naked Harry. 

“I was seventeen. There was a man who… _loved_ me, so I made him happy.” Harry cringed; talking about Voldemort like he wanted what the man had done to him made his stomach twist into knots, but he could hardly tell Tom the truth. Harry was completely naked in the photo, and he was sitting back on his ankles with his legs spread into a V, much like ‘Jason’ had been. Except Harry’s mouth was closed into a thin line, and his arms were stretched up over his head with his hands bound together. Harry could remember that day. It had been a month before his 18th birthday and Voldemort had left him tied up, naked, for the entire time, only releasing him as a birthday gift from a merciful Master. 

“You’re tied up!” Tom gasped, his eyes moving away from the photo’s crotch area and to the hands that were bound. 

“He liked that.” Harry admitted. “Seeing me submit to him. He liked that.” Harry shook his head, clearing away the thoughts of things that he would never let happen again, and he smiled at Tom. “Anyway, I should probably take that one out. After all, you think loving another man is wrong.”

“I don’t.” Tom drew the album away from Harry’s outstretched hand. One of his palms was pressed onto the photo, protecting it from view or from being taken away. “They said it was, the nuns said it was. But if you do it, it must be ok then, right?”

“Well… I love you, Tom.” Harry smiled shyly over at the child, a blush staining his cheeks. When Tom blushed in return, Harry thanked Merlin for all the practise he’d had at acting. It was coming in handy. “But I can stop if you want?”

“NO! No, it’s fine. I bet the nuns are wrong anyway. They always lie, you know. They tell me I’m bad when I haven’t done anything wrong, and they say I’ll go to hell, and that I’ve the devil in me. But I’ve never done anything wrong! So maybe they’re making this up too? I mean,” Tom scratched at the back of his neck, suddenly looking like the child he really was, “if you love me, then it can’t be wrong can it?”

Harry didn’t answer that. Instead, he folded his hands in his lap, keeping them away from the album Tom was protecting, and said, “Do you have any other photos you’d like to put in here?”

“I don’t have any friends.” Tom admitted in a whisper. He closed the album softly, his fingers still caressing the cover. 

“You have me!” Harry lifted Tom’s chin. He leant in quickly, pressing his lips to Tom’s cheek softly before pulling back with a smile. “I’ll always be your special friend, Tom. You won’t ever need anyone else.”

Tom smiled at him. For the first time in a year Tom was the first one to lean over, and he hugged Harry. 

_XXX_

March 15th 1934. 7 years old. 

The past four years had been pleasant enough. Tom hadn’t actually been a hard child to get along with, Harry had found. The 32-year-old smiled softly to himself as he waited at the base of _their_ hill for Tom to appear. He had actually started to like spending time with Tom. He no longer thought of the boy as Voldemort, but that wasn’t enough for him to change his plans. His plans were already in motion, and –what was that saying? – you couldn’t unring a bell. 

Harry’s eyes narrowed as he heard running footsteps. Tom was always excited to see him, but he never ran. Harry had taught him it was undignified, something only a Mudblood would do, and while Tom hadn’t understood that word he had easily accepted what Harry was saying as the truth. 

“Tom?” Harry called softly, pushing himself up off of the ground. 

As the boy had grown, he had had to find a new way to escape from the orphanage when he didn’t want anyone to know where he was. Tom had contemplated lying and telling Mrs. Cole he was going to London, but Harry didn’t like liars. It was just as easy to climb up the ash tree in the courtyard and jump over the fence, and it had been to climb under the fence. Tom had found it strange that the ash tree seemed to bend for him, helping him reach its branches, but if Eric Whalley tried to follow him the tree would always just be that much too high for Eric to reach, even though Eric was taller than Tom. 

He had told Harry about it once, and Harry had just laughed and told Tom, “The ash tree is very similar to the yew tree. You have an affiliation with the yew, Tom, and the ash is just taking care of one of its brother’s own.” 

“Tom?” Harry called again, frowning. 

Tom came into view then, and he was running, and crying. He had turned seven a few months back, and he had hit a growth spurt. Harry had always been short, and when Tom threw himself into Harry’s arms his head slammed into Harry’s chest, knocking the breath from him. Tom nuzzled against his chest, wiping his tears onto Harry’s shirt, as Harry’s arms came up to wrap around the child’s shoulders. 

“What is it, Tom?” Harry asked after a few minute of letting Tom cry. The boy pulled back with a sniffle, and tilted his head up. Harry smiled softly, knowing what Tom wanted, and he nodded once before leaning down to press his lips against the child’s. It had become their way of comforting Tom when the boy was upset enough to seek Harry out. Usually when Tom cried, the boy preferred to be on his own. That was usually because a couple had shown an interest in adopting him, and then had changed their mind because of the things Mrs. Cole and the other children said about him. But not much else made Tom cry, except for that time when—

“Oh Tom, no!” Harry whispered, “tell me you didn’t push another child out of a window?” It had taken several ‘ **Obliviate** ’s’ and countless visits to the Ministry of Magic, and an ‘ **Imperio** ’ to take care of Helen Doyle’s death. 

“No!” Tom hissed, tilting his head up again. 

Harry kissed him again, brushing their lips together lightly and then pressing down harder as Tom leaned into his touch. “What is it?” Harry asked again, giving the boy another kiss, his tongue flicking out to swipe over Tom’s closed lips. 

Tom had grown used to Harry hugging him and kissing him. Now, whenever Tom was upset, he would tilt his head forward slightly and raise his chin, and Harry would give Tom the kiss he was silently asking for. 

“Tell me what’s wrong?” 

“They killed her!” Tom shrieked, pulling away from Harry and throwing himself onto the ground. He pressed his face into his arms, and Harry watched the boy’s shoulders shake for a minute before he sat down on the ground and gathered Tom onto his lap. 

“Killed who, Tom?”

“My friend.” The boy whispered fearfully. He had never told Harry, terrified that Harry would think he was lying, or would hate him for being a freak, or leave him because Tom was trying to replace him. “She was a snake.” He admitted softly. “They find me, and tell me things, the snakes do. But she was nice. She used to sleep in the same room as us, and wake me up if one of the other boy’s tried to do anything or take my stuff.” Tom was curled in Harry’s lap now, but he looked up, reaching up with his hands to cup Harry’s face. “You’re still my special friend though, right? I swear I could talk to her, Harry, I swear! I’m not lying and I wasn’t trying to replace you!” Harry shifted, Tom’s weight on him doing unmentionable things to his anatomy, but Tom gave a cry and pressed himself tighter against his friend. “Don’t leave me!”

“I’m not going anywhere, Tom. My legs are going numb,” Harry said. He shifted Tom, straightening his legs and pushing Tom down them, away from his groin. “Who killed your snake?” 

“You believe me?” Tom whispered. “I told Mrs. Cole because I didn’t want to lie to her, and she said that Eric and the others had probably saved my life. She said the snake was probably trying to kill me, that’s what it means when they get into the bed with you. I tried to tell her, Harry, but she told me I was lying! She called the nuns over. And they said I was going to hell, because I’m evil and a liar and it’s no wonder no one wanted me.” 

Harry squeezed the child’s waist lightly, but didn’t interrupt. “There was this woman, and she was so beautiful. I like to imagine she looked like my mum, and Harry! She asked if I wanted to go home with her! And she was there, she heard what the Sister said to me, and she just left. She left me.” 

“Hush now, child. Remember, I don’t like boys who do bad things. Eric Whalley will get his, I promise. You just have to be patient.” Harry let Tom cry against him, until the boy had calmed and pulled away. Blue eyes brightened as they landed on Harry’s face, and Tom leant forward to kiss his friend again. “There’s something I want to tell you, Tom. I should have told you sooner, but there are people who don’t want you to know yet. I was afraid they’d find out you knew and take you away from me, but you’re old enough to keep a secret now. You can keep a secret, can’t you Tom?”

“I can!” The child promised.

“If you tell anyone, Tom, I can never see you again. And then I’d miss you, because I love you.” Harry bit his bottom lip as he tried not to chuckle. Tom’s eyes were watering again, and his face had paled in fear. 

“No, no! I won’t ever tell, I promise. Don’t go!” Tom’s small hands were clenched into the wet fabric of Harry’s shirt, holding on for dear life, and Harry closed his own hands over Tom’s and squeezed. 

“I can speak to snakes too,” he whispered, his mouth pressed right against Tom’s ear. The boy shuddered, warm breath ghosting over his skin, and he felt something that he had never felt before, but he pushed it aside because he also felt surprise. 

“You can?” His voice was light and hopeful, desperate to know he wasn’t the only freak in the world. 

“Yes. Not many of our kind can, though. It’s sort of inherited. You got it from your mother, I’d say, and I know I got it from my father.8 You remember the man who loved me?” Tom nodded, eyes wide as he hung off of every word, “He was able to speak it too. All of his mother’s family could. It’s called Parseltongue, the serpent language.” 

“But… does that mean we’re related?” 

“Probably, but very distantly if that. It wouldn’t make any difference, Tom,” Harry promised him before leaning in and waiting. Nervously, Tom’s lips met his own. “It doesn’t make this wrong, and it doesn’t stop me from loving you.”

“I love you too, Harry.” Tom breathed, licking his lips. “Since we’re related, can I come live with you?” 

“Well,” Harry said, pretending to think about it, “we’d have to share the same bed, and… no. No, we couldn’t. They’d know, and they’d take you from me, Tom. They could make me forget you even existed, and I wouldn’t know any better when you’ve left me and I’d never go searching for you. I couldn’t bare to lose you like that, against both of our wills.” 

“How could they make you forget me?” Tom questioned, his eyes lowered in disappointment. 

“This is the secret part, Tom. You’re a Wizard. Just like me.” Tom’s head snapped up. His eyes were narrowed, and Harry scowled as he recognized the cynical Tom Riddle from Dumbledore’s Pensieve memories. “We can do magic. Magic is how they could make me forget you.”

“Prove it,” the boy spat. He crawled from Harry’s lap, his legs drawn to his chest protectively as he glared at the man who had promised never to lie to him. 

“Ok, this is a wand. Witches and Wizards use it to channel magic.” He held out his Holly wand, allowing Tom to take a good look at it, before he pointed it at the willow tree that stood watch over them, the only witness to Harry’s actions. “ **Incendio** ,” he said loudly enough for Tom to hear clearly. The tree burst into flames.

Tom gave a cry, scrambling away from the burning tree and he looked over at Harry with horrified blue eyes. 

“ **Aguamenti** ,” Harry whispered, and a jet of water shot from the end of his wand, towards the willow tree. The flames disappeared, and Tom stood and made his way towards the tree. The base of the trunk was blackened, but the top of the tree looked fine. Some of its swaying branches were bare now, it’s leaves burnt away, and Tom reached out to grab one, only to gasp as it crumbled to ash in his hand. “I don’t know how to heal the tree,” Harry told him with a shrug, “I was never very good at Herbology in school.”

“School?” Tom asked, turning away from the tree. 

“Hmm, yes. Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.” Harry tucked his wand away. “You’ll be invited there when you’re eleven. That’s when they were going to tell you that you could do magic. The cracks that appear in the wall, Helen Doyle flying out of the window even though you never pushed her, speaking to snakes, the way the temperature drops in the room when you’re very angry: all of that is you doing magic, Tom. And when you go to School, you’ll learn how to control it so that you don’t hurt anyone, even when you are angry.” 

“Did you ever hurt people with your magic?” Tom asked, glancing up at Harry’s face. 

The man looked down on him blankly, and then smiled, “only when they were bad.” 

_XXX_

August 12th 1935. 8 years old. 

Tom was sleeping beside him in the bed. They had been sharing the same bed for three months now, even since Harry’s application to foster Tom had been approved. Since it wasn’t an adoption, the Ministry of Magic didn’t need to be notified, which meant that no one would find out about Tom until his Hogwarts letter came. That suited Harry perfectly. 

His fingers brushed back Tom’s fringe lightly, caressing the smooth skin of the child’s forehead. He was going away for the weekend. The orphanage was taking them all to some little coastal town for a few days to soak up the air, sea and sand, and Harry was partially funding it. It was going to cost a lot, but Harry didn’t mind. After all, he was from the future, he knew which businesses were going to make it big and he had happily invested what money he did have into them, and now he was turning over a rather large annual profit without having to do any actual work. That wasn’t including the money he was being paid at his job, especially now that he had been promoted. Apparently, fostering a ‘damaged’ kid was seen as a good thing where he worked. 

“Tom, wake up.” Harry shook his shoulder lightly. “You don’t want to be late.” 

Tom woke slowly, stretching his arms above his head and arching his back. He pressed himself against Harry, and nuzzled the man’s neck lightly. Tom had always been a very sexual person, charming and charismatic. While it was still too early for his hormones to have kicked in, being around Harry was awakening the instinct. They had watched a porn film together a week or so ago, and while it had been hard for Harry to find one that used the words ‘I love you’ several times, he had done so. Ever since, Tom kept asking why Harry wouldn’t touch him.

Harry rolled Tom away from him, urging him towards the bathroom. “Go on, you’re going to be late. Get washed up.” 

Tom gave him a pout, but obediently rolled from the bed. When the bathroom door closed behind Tom, Harry brought a hand to his face and sighed into it. He had sex with Voldemort several times, but he had never been in charge. Experience was the key to manipulation. Harry didn’t know what he was doing; he didn’t know how to have sex with someone else instead of someone having sex with him. Despite the fact that Harry had successfully modified Tom’s behavioural patterns, if Tom knew that Harry was inexperienced, Harry would no longer be in control. That was the way people like Tom worked. They liked to be in charge, they loved to take the lead and subjugate others to their will. And that would be fine. But Tom wouldn’t be doing that to Harry, anyone else, but not Harry. Not again. 

That was why Harry was sending Tom away for the weekend. Mrs. Cole had mentioned wanting to plan a trip for the children, and she had politely asked if Tom could remain behind with Harry. Harry had told her to take Tom along, and when she had tried to refuse, Harry had offered to pay half of the cost of the trip, in advance. However, Eric Whalley was too sick to go. Harry had made sure of that. 

With the right potions ingredients, it actually hadn’t been that hard to mimic the effect of the Weasley Twins’ puking pastiels. He had the antidote sweet in his jacket pocket, draped over the back of his sofa, the one he had been planning on wearing when he dropped Tom off for the bus. Then he would kindly offer to take Eric off of poor Martha’s hands, to look after him for a few days, because Lord knows Harry would be lonely without Tom in his bed. 

“I’m ready,” Tom said, hands on his hips, “and you’re still in the bed. Get up, now.”

“Spoken like a true fishwife, Tom,” Harry teased. He slid from the bed, unconcerned that he was completely naked and half hard from his deliciously naughty thoughts. Harry knew Tom was watching him, so he made a show of stretching and rolling his shoulders, arching his back and pushing his hips forward before he bent over to pick up his trousers. “Well,” Harry said over his shoulder, “are you gonna eat something here, or catch a crab for breakfast at the seaside?”

With a blush on his face, Tom left for the kitchen. Harry didn’t need to turn around to know that Tom was still peeking at him from around the edge of the kitchen door, just like Harry knew Tom examined him when he thought Harry was sleeping. And Merlin, Harry thought, remembering, Tom’s hand had felt good on his cock. 

_XXX_

August 13th 1935. 

It had taken a day to convince Martha to allow Eric to go home with Harry. She was the only staff member left at the orphanage, because of the number of children going on the trip, Mrs. Cole and every other staff member were required by law to accompany them. Martha had been left alone with the under 2’s and the children who were ill. Harry had to give the woman credit. She had lasted a day before she had sent him a telegraph, almost pleading with him to take the child he wanted for a few days. She was contacting all of the old fosterers, handing over sick children to families who would mind them until Mrs. Cole came back, because she couldn’t cope with them and the babies. It was a testament to her strength of character that she had lasted a whole day. Eric had been in Harry’s company less than half an hour and he was already fit to kill the boy. 

“I don’t feel well!” Eric whined again. They were in a carriage, being pulled along by two black horses, and the coachman kept looking back over his shoulder and sending exasperated looks at Harry. “This taxi is making me feel worse! Why can’t be walk?”

“You told me you were too sick to walk,” Harry said through gritted teeth. He couldn’t wait to get back to his flat. The moment they were alone he was shoving the antidote down the boy’s throat, whether Eric choked on it or not. “We’re almost there.”

“Why do I have to come with you?” Eric whinged. “I bet you’re a freak like Riddle! I want to go back to Martha! I WANT TO GO BACK!” The boy flailed in his seat, his fist knocking into Harry’s jaw, and what was left of mild-mannered Harry Potter from his old world suddenly fled. 

His hands were around Eric’s throat, squeezing his thumbs down just under the boy’s chin. Whalley gasped and bucked, making horrible choking sounds as he clawed at Harry’s hands with his own. With tears in his eyes, the ten year old looked up at Harry, terrified and silently pleading. 

“If you ever speak about Tom like that again, I’ll kill you,” Harry promised, breathing into the boy’s ear so that the coachman wouldn’t hear him. The man had probably noticed anyway, but corporeal punishment was a big thing in the 1930s apparently, and this boy was a poor, unimportant orphan. No one would complain if Harry gave the whiny brat a few slaps, but with what Harry had in mind for the weekend, it was best that no one hear him outright threaten the boy’s life. 

Harry withdrew his hands, sitting back against his seat calmly as if he hadn’t just attacked the child. Eric gripped his own throat, swallowing convulsively, and he scooted across the seat as far from Harry as he could get without falling out of the carriage. Wide brown eyes stared at him, watery and red-rimmed, but Harry ignored the pitiful looks he was being sent. He felt no sympathy or compassion for the little bully. In fact, he felt nothing for anyone in this time except Tom, which was strange enough. He had come here to hurt Tom, not to grow fond of him, but Harry supposed he could do both. Real psychopaths knew that it was necessary to hurt their victims sometimes, a counter balance to all of the positive reinforcement they had to give to make the victim trust them in the first place. No one could be all good all the time. Not even while pretending. 

“Stop your snivelling. We’ll be home soon and I have some medicine lying around that should help with your cold.” Whalley gave a gasp, probably afraid of being poisoned as well as choked, but he kept his thoughts to himself. 

As they climbed out of the taxi, the coachman came around to hold his hand out. It was the same man who usually carted Harry and Tom around, and he was used to helping lift Tom down, but as Eric went to place his hand in the coachman’s Harry knocked it aside. “That won’t be necessary.” He handed over some money, more than was necessary. “Keep the change,” he said, staring into the Muggle’s eyes, “and your tongue silent.” 

Harry took Eric by the shoulders and steered him towards the front door of the flat. He lived on the second floor, and it was a bit of a chore to force the boy up the flight of stairs separating Flat 13a from 13b, but Harry managed it with a wandless ‘ **Levicorpus** ’ that had Eric sprawling up the last few steps and landing in a pile in front of Harry’s door. “Home sweet home,” Harry muttered as he shoved the boy through the open front door. “First things first, eat this.” He held out the sweet that he had been keeping in his jacket pocket. “It’ll make you feel better. I’d rather you not throw up on me or my things, especially while I’m… educating you.” 

“Educating?” Whalley mumbled, hesitantly reaching for the sweet. 

Harry waited until it was in the boys mouth before closing his hand over the lower part of Eric’s face. “Chew and swallow, boy.” He ordered. “Yes, you’ll have to study while you’re here, despite the fact that it’s a weekend. But well, it’s not typical schoolwork, so we’ll call it our little secret. In fact, it’ll be a learning experience for us both. I dare say it might even be fun, for me.” He added the last part with a chuckle, removing his hand from Whalley’s face. “Come on, I need to examine you.”

Eric turned wide eyes on him, but Harry ignored the look in favour of man handling the boy into the bathroom. He stopped to grab a clipboard and a pen, and then followed, locking the bathroom door behind him. 

“Ok, strip.” 

“Wha-? No! NO WAY!” Eric shouted, backing away from Harry. 

“Oh it’s all profession, I promise. See, I have a clipboard, and if you want I’ll get my white coat. I’m a doctor, didn’t Tom tell you? I work at the Institution. St Brutus’ Centre For Incurably Criminal Boys. It’s a nice place to work,” Harry confided in him.

“Tha- that’s not what it’s called!” Eric stammered worriedly. “It’s a hospital!”

“Oh, it is? Of course, my mistake, I’m getting confused with my last job at the Asylum.” Harry lied easily. 

Harry was trying very hard not to laugh, but Eric’s reactions were just too funny. The boy’s face kept alternating between red and white, and if he changed colours any more Harry thought he might faint. But it was amusing, and Eric had it coming. It had been one of Eric’s favourite taunts to use on Tom: that he was a freak, that they’d send him to the Institution or the Asylum, that when Harry started fostering him it was so he could do experiments on Tom. 

Harry was going to enjoy this weekend. The fact that he was using Tom’s worst nemesis just made things all the sweeter. Tom was his to hurt, and only his. No one else had the right to cause Tom pain. Not Mrs. Cole, or Eric Whalley, or even Albus Dumbledore. It was Harry’s turn to take charge now, not Voldemort’s; the tables were turned. 

Tom was _his_. 

_XXX_

August 14th 1935.

Harry had resorted to cursing the Muggle in the end. It was the only way he could get the boy to get into the same bed as him. It wasn’t like Harry had actually done anything to Eric anyway, so he wasn’t sure what the boy was in a snit about! The boy had spent all morning sulking, and threatening to run away back to the orphanage because he wasn’t spending another night with a paedophile. 

Harry merely chuckled, ticked off something on his clipboard and carried on trying to work. It was easy to ignore the noise Eric made. It had been equally as loud back at Privet Drive when he was trying to do his homework, but he had always managed fine. 

“Are you listening to me?” Eric shouted, leaning over Harry’s sitting form and trying to seem intimidating. He looked like a spoilt child who wasn’t getting his way, and Harry rolled his eyes in response. “I’m not sleeping here again! I feel fine now so you can send me back! I don’t want you near me any longer!” 

It was almost endearing how quickly Eric had gotten over his near strangulation. Almost. At first. But right now, Harry was finding the boy’s lack of fear of him very, very annoying. “Look!” Harry hissed, glancing up from his work, “you’re starting to really annoy me you brat.”

“And you’re a sick freak!” Harry’s fists clenched on his lap. “I bet that’s why you want Tom, isn’t it? Cause he’s a good little whore, and a freak like you! I bet he loves it, what you do, what he lets you do! Well I’m not like him, and I won’t le-” The boy gave a scream, cutting into his own words as Harry’s fist flew towards him and nearly broke his nose. The boy fell backwards, landing painfully on the ground, sobbing as he brought his hands up to his face. 

“I was going to wait until tonight, but I find I can’t wait any longer. I’ve always preferred to do things in the harsh light of day anyway. It helps you see what you really are. That’s much healthier than hiding away in the dark anyway. Trust me,” Harry said, waving his clipboard, “I’d know.”

“What are you? NO!” Eric tried to kick him, but Harry grabbed him under the arms and dragged the boy to his feet. 

It wasn’t as easy as it was made look on TV, but Harry managed to throw the boy over his shoulder like a fireman and carry him into the bedroom. He punched Eric again, stunning him, and then laid him on the bed. The child blinked a few times, but was too shocked to actually try and escape. Harry locked all of the doors leading away from the bedroom, and added a Ward just in case. With a smirk, he let Eric see his wand as he placed a Curse around the room that would prevent them both from speaking about what would happen anywhere other than back inside of the bedroom. 

“Let’s get started, shall we?” With a wave of Harry’s wand the boy was naked. Eric gave a cry, curling up to cover himself, but as Harry moved towards him he jumped from the bed and tried to run. The door didn’t budge, and Harry smirked as Eric started beating on the wood with his fists. 

“Oh please! Please let me go.” 

“I will.” Eric’s face transformed instantly, going from desperate to relieved, and then just as suddenly back to terrified as Harry spoke again, “when I’m finished.” 

( **warning: rape & violence** )

Another wave of his wand had Eric flying backwards onto the bed. The child gave a groan as he landed, rolling to the side as he tried to make another run for it. 

“This is getting tedious,” Harry muttered, tapping his wand off of his leg. “ **Crucio**!” Harry listened to Eric scream, writhing on the bed, naked and flushed and clawing at the skin of his face, whimpering pathetically between pain filled shouts. 

He wondered, briefly, if Tom would sound as beautiful screaming. 

A flick of his wand, and Eric fell silent, except for the occasional gasp and whimper. 

“Now let’s try this again. Do not run; there is no point. I need to practise, because practise makes perfect and experience is the best teacher. I am sorry, well no, I’m not, but I thought it would make you feel a bit better. Does it? If I say I’m sorry?” Eric didn’t answer. He curled his legs towards his chest and buried his face in his knees as he cried. “Hmm, anyway. I need to be in control, and to remain in control I need to know what I’m doing. So this is how it’s going to work. I will do something to you and you will truthfully tell me how it feels. Feel free to just scream if it hurts to much for you to talk, ok?”

Without waiting for a response, Harry climbed onto the bed. He grabbed both of Eric’s ankles and pulled, dragging the child down the bed and straightening out his legs. Harry pushed them apart, crawling up the bed to kneel between them, and he smiled softly down at the child. 

“Now, now, don’t cry.” Harry whispered, one hand coming out to brush the tears from Eric’s cheek. Voldemort had always hated it when Harry cried during sex. He had claimed it was distracting and insulting, and Harry had to say he disagreed. Watching Eric cry made Harry’s cock throb, and he used his hand, wet with Eric’s tears, to palm himself through his trousers. 

He muttered something under his breath, and Eric gave a scream as all of Harry’s clothes vanished. The struggles started again, and Harry reached down to squeeze on the boy’s throat, effectively silencing him. 

Voldemort had originally taken Harry dry and unprepared, and Harry had remembered feeling as if he were being torn into two pieces, ripped apart at the seams so roughly that he would never again be able to fit back together. He had screamed and cried and begged for it to end. Voldemort had enjoyed himself, but not Harry’s tears. For the first year, he had ignored it, taking Harry roughly, painfully, almost punishing the boy with every thrust of his hips and razor sharp jab of his cock. But that hadn’t lasted. Eventually Voldemort had started _pleasuring_ Harry, as well as himself, using his fingers and his tongue inside and on Harry, making the boy pant and beg for more. Harry knew every step by heart: how to prepare himself, what to use, at what point he was stretched enough, which positions were the least uncomfortable or least painful. 

He had never been on the giving end before though. For his first time, he wanted to do things right. 

He brought his fingers to his mouth, sucking and licking on them obscenely, knowing that Eric was watching him with wide, horrified eyes. The fingers probed at Eric’s opening, and the boy gave another cry and tried to shove Harry off of him, writhing from side to side, trying to dislodge the finger that was pressed fully into his arse. 

”GET OFF!” He screamed, trailing off into a gasping sob as Harry unmercifully added two more fingers. “AH!” He cried, turning his face away as his tears fell faster. 

“So,” Harry said to himself, “impatience is a no-go.” He would have to remember to take his time with Tom. Tom’s body was so much smaller than Harry’s own the first time Harry was subject to this. By the time Voldemort felt it was right to prepare Harry for sex, the boy’s arse was so used to it, that a quick finger-fuck wasn’t any different to a slow one in terms of pain. Forcing his fingers into a child, without scissoring them first, apparently hurt the child. 

Three fingers had always been enough for Harry, and Harry pulled his hand back and eyes the red-rimmed hole with curiosity. Would he even fit? He had always thought Voldemort wouldn’t fit inside of him, no matter how many times he was taken Harry’s heart always skipped a beat at having something so large pushing into him. Eric was smaller than Harry had been. Maybe he should use an extra finger? 

He decided not to. If only to see if it would hurt that much more than the fingers had. He had to know for sure, after all, so that way he wouldn’t make the same mistake with Tom. If he took Eric from behind it would be more comfortable for the child, and that was the position he intended to use for Tom, but hadn’t he once promised Tom that Eric Whalley would get his? Harry smirked, the corners of his lips pulling up so high that he unintentionally bared his teeth at the trembling boy beneath him. 

He laid himself down, covering Eric like a blanket. Harry released a moan; the feeling of his cock nudging lightly against the boy’s arse was a most welcome feeling. He had paid for whores since arriving in the year 1930, but none of them had been male, and the prospect of them all put together had never been as arousing as the thought of taking this one boy. Harry rocked forward, slowly bouncing his cock against the child’s bum, and Eric let out a terrible whimper. It was as if he were in terrible pain, broken and bleeding and he had no way of calling out for help: there was just that whimper, low and tortured as it was, and as Eric let it out again, Harry lined up his erection and _pushed_.

A scream wrent the air. Eric bucked beneath him, pushing with his arms, and his legs were flailing about, desperate to get Harry off of him, out of him. But his efforts were barely noticed. Harry drew back and rocked forward immediately, losing himself in the tightness and the heat that surrounded him. Something sticky ran down his balls and inner thighs, and Harry knew that he had made the boy bleed, badly most likely. 

He would have to be slower with Tom, gentler. But until that time, he was free to enjoy himself over and over again with Eric. 

When Harry felt it building inside of him, the pooling heat in his lower stomach and the tightening in his groin, he groped beside him on the bed. His wand in hand, he pointed it at the screaming child, thrusting in and out and in and out as Eric cried and begged and whimpered, and he cast, “ **Crucio**!” 

The boy gave another heart-wrenching scream, his back arching like a bow as he wailed. Harry grunted, loudly, but in satisfaction as Eric’s seizing muscles milked every last drop of his release from his cock. He collapsed on the boy, ending the spell, and panted heavily against the child’s neck. Harry smiled, listening with fondness, to the boy as he cried softly, attempting to curl into a protective ball but unable to due to Harry’s weight on top of him, and that made him cry harder. 

Their lips met, and Eric tried to resist, tried to keep his mouth closed, but Harry was hard again and he thrust back into Eric’s body without warning. A cry left the child, his mouth opening for a moment, before Harry stole it and the sound he had made in a kiss. 

“I had thought you were a useless brat,” Harry admitted, pausing to release a low moan and give a particularly hard thrust of his hips, “but perhaps you are good for something after all.”

( **warning ends** )

 

Eric would have to be returned to Stockwell Orphanage the following morning. He wouldn’t be able to speak about what had happened, the Curse would prevent that, but Harry would need to heal some of the child’s internal injuries unless he wanted to risk some sort of investigation. He had planned to tell Martha that he and Eric had fought, that Eric had run off and been knocked down by a taxi carriage. Horses could do a lot of damage to someone who run under their hooves: but none of that damage would be to Eric’s anal cavity, so Harry would heal that, if only that. 

This had been done with the thought of practising for Tom, to gain experience and knowledge so that he could seduce Tom, to fuck Tom, with himself firmly in charge of the proceedings. Harry would take the lead, and now he knew what to do, and how to do it. But he was enjoying himself too much to stop. They had the rest of the afternoon and the night. Eric wasn’t going anywhere just yet. 

Harry had planned on making _it_ , when it happened, a better experience for Tom, better than the first time Harry had suffered through at Voldemort’s hands. Voldemort might never know what was happening, but Harry was enjoying the revenge he was handing out nonetheless. One day, in the future, someone would tell Tom that what Harry had done to him was wrong, and when that day came, and Harry was proven to be a monster, he would laugh and rejoice because he knew that Tom wouldn’t care. He would still love Harry, still _crave_ Harry, and still miss Harry’s presence. 

Tom would be just like Harry then. 

They would both be suffering the same fate, and that was the only suitable punishment for Lord Voldemort. It was just what he deserved. 

“Please let me go?” Eric whispered as Harry flipped him onto his stomach. 

“When I’m finished,” Harry repeated before losing himself in the rhythm of his thrusts and the feeling that surrounded his length. Tom would be better, sweeter in some way. But the waiting was just as sweet. 

_XXX_

December 31st 1936. 10 years old. 9

This was the first time that Tom would be seeing the magical side of London. The boy watched avidly as Harry tapped out the correct sequence on the brick wall behind The Leaky Cauldron. 

Harry wouldn’t put it off any longer, feeling that it was best to let Tom see how different and special Wizards really were before Dumbledore attempted to show the boy in a year and a half’s time. Dumbledore’s attempt at introducing Tom Riddle to the Wizarding World hadn’t gone so well in Harry’s original timeline, and now that he owned Tom, Harry felt reluctant to let Dumbledore have that much sway on the boy. Anyway, seeing things with Harry would put things into a different perspective than if Tom had seen them alone. This way, Harry could talk Tom out of any foolish ideas he may be persuaded to believe in. Harry had met someone like Draco Malfoy on his first day in Diagon Alley; who was to say the same hadn’t happened to Tom? 

Harry had decided to take Tom sometime that week, but it was only that morning that he had decided for definite that they would visit the Alley today. That morning had been a good one. They had woken up in bed together, Harry completely naked and Tom half dressed like always. The only difference this time being that Harry had woken up with his cock in Tom’s mouth. Harry had watched Tom in silence, except for the occasional moan that he couldn’t hold back, and he had kept his hands off of the boy completely, choosing instead to fist them in the pillow by his head. He had made no move to stop Tom’s ministrations. In fact, Harry had rather enjoyed them. When he was finished, and Tom was coughing and wiping a trace of semen from his mouth, Harry had grabbed his chin roughly and hissed, “where did you learn to do that?” 

“I- I,” Tom stuttered, averting his eyes in embarrassment. “Was I not good? I tried my hardest, Harry! And I swallowed like the book told me too!” 

“Book?” Harry said, his eyes narrowing in thought. He had thought, for one fleeting moment, that Tom might have done as he had and found someone to practise on, but he had immediately pushed the thought from his mind. Tom’s personality wasn’t like that. If it had been anyone other than Harry, Tom’s idea of ‘practising’ a blowjob would be forcing _his_ cock down _their_ throats. Unfortunately, brushing aside the thought hadn’t dispelled any of the irrational jealousy that the thought had stirred up. The green monster was alive in Harry’s chest again, and this time it wasn’t focused on Ginny Weasley. “What book?”

“I snuck out to the library while you were in work last Monday. I was in the adult’s section, and I was careful not to be seen, I promise. But, here, I took the book.” Seeing Harry’s blank expression, Tom paled and shook his head furiously. “I’m bringing it back, I swear, I am! I just didn’t feel comfortable reading it in the library!” He hurried from the bedroom, and returned with a book that he had hidden only Merlin knows where in another room of Harry’s flat. “Here.”

And he handed Harry a copy of An Introduction to Sex Education10 and Harry took the book with a chuckle. He opened the front cover and smiled to himself. Trust Tom to find probably the only Karma Sutra of their time in the local library. 

Harry had handed it back with a smirk, and then he lay back down, spreading out on the bed. “You were very good, Tom,” he praised, feeling satisfied at the flush that stole over Tom’s skin. “Except for the choking part at the end, but feel free to practise whenever you wish.” 

Tom had accepted the offer immediately. 

They arrived at the Alley later than Harry had originally intended to, but that morning’s activities wouldn’t be regretted. That Tom had instigated, practically twice, without being asked or cajoled was brilliant for Harry. He was playing his part well, and Tom had fallen, hook, line and sinker into the behavioural trap.

When Tom had finished looking around with awe, Harry turned to the child. “So, Jason,” Harry said, using the fake name they had agreed upon. Jason, of course, being the toddler in the pornographic photos that Harry had once shown Tom, and still had at home in a drawer. “Since it is your birthday, where would you like to go first?” 

“A bookshop,” Tom immediately stated. Harry wondered why he had bothered to even ask. From Harry’s flat to The Leaky Cauldron their time was spent by Tom asking if Wizards had any sex-books about homosexuals. Muggles didn’t, of course, and Tom had guiltily admitted to searching for some in the library before resigning himself to reading about sex from a women’s point of view. “I would really like to find something decent to read,” and as he said the word ‘decent’, Tom turned to Harry and smiled widely. 

Harry felt his cock jump in response, his eyes focused intently on the pale lips that were spread and parted, and he imagined himself sliding his prick in between them, stretching that mouth further and wider until Tom was all around him. 

“Sorry,” Harry said suddenly, “I missed that.”

Tom rolled his eyes, probably knowing what had Harry so distracted, and he brought one finger to his mouth to suck on lightly as he said, “I would like to find something to read that would educate me on how to fuck you.” 

Harry’s hand came out suddenly, and for the first time he hit Tom. His fist met Tom’s cheek, and the child’s head snapped to one side as a soft exhalation of surprise and pain left his mouth. 

“Understand one thing, Tom, if you understand nothing else in life.” Harry leant down, until he was eye level with Tom. Harry’s hand wrenched Tom’s head to the side, making them face to face, and Tom lowered his eyes submissively. With his lips pressed right against Tom’s ear, Harry hissed quietly, “ _I_ will be fucking _you_.” 

“Yes Harry,” Tom said softly. 

When Harry pulled away, he steadfastly ignored the crowd of Witches and Wizards and children that his behaviour had gathered, and instead reached down to thread his fingers with Tom’s willing ones. 

“Come on, Flourish & Blotts is over here.” 

Tom followed him willingly, not wanting to think about what would happen if Harry got angry enough to leave him here in this strange, magical, unfamiliar place. 

“Don’t leave me?” Tom breathed as Harry steered him into the bookshop. 

He had already forgiven Harry for hitting him. It had been the only time, after all, and the Muggles at the Orphanage had always done worse to him when he had been younger and less able to defend himself. Harry loved him. Harry must have had a reason to punish him, why else would he have done it? There was a logical explanation for everything, Tom thought, and Harry’s burst of anger was no different. The Wizard had a temper; everyone knew that. It was why Mrs. Cole was so quick to cave into his demands, why she had allowed a second term of fostering without so much as asking Harry to fill in any paperwork, and Tom could still remember what Eric Whalley had looked like over a year ago, after Tom’s trip to the seaside, after Eric had spent the weekend at Harry’s house. Tom knew better than to do anything bad or to lie or steal. He only borrowed things, like that library book and he always returned them; he never lied, unless he had Harry’s permission, about things like using accidental magic; and he would never, ever, do anything evil or wrong or cruel that he knew Harry wouldn’t approve of, because he couldn’t bare the thought of Harry not loving him anymore. 

“Please don’t leave me?” Tom repeated as Harry maintained his silence. 

Harry handed him a book, entitled “The Joys of Homosexual Intercourse”, and offered him a soft smile, though he didn’t apologize. “I won’t leave you if you’re good.” Harry promised. 

“I knew you were going to be in charge. When, you know, we have, you know,” Tom stuttered with a blush on his cheeks. “I didn’t mean it the way it sounded. The book said it was making love ‘to each other’, regardless of who was on top, right?” Tom looked so confused, his eyebrows lowered and his forehead furrowed, and he looked at Harry with wide and innocent eyes, despite the things he had seen and done, and Harry felt a warm smile replacing the forced one he had been wearing.

“Of course, when it is making love.” He agreed diplomatically. He should probably use this conversation to differentiate between ‘making love’ and ‘dominating’ someone. They were two different experiences, two different ways to have sex, and Harry would soon be subjecting Tom to both types, and more. “But when we _fuck_ ,” he bit his bottom lip as he said it, making the word sound more like ‘fuh-uck’, than ‘fuck’, and Tom let out a soft moan at the sound, “I will be in charge.” 

“Of course, Harry,” Tom acquiesced. He reached out his hand, the one not holding the book, and Harry laced their fingers together before bringing them up for a kiss. Tom tilted his chin up immediately after Harry had lowered their joined hands, and without evening checking if someone was watching, Harry leant down and stole Tom’s mouth in a kiss. 

“You are mine.” The words were low and possessive, and Tom shivered at the tone.

“Yes, sir,” he agreed, his hands and shoulders shaking. “All yours.” 

Harry kissed him again, pulling Tom tight against his chest, and forcing his tongue into the ten-year-old’s mouth. Tom’s tongue lay dormant, occasionally flicking upwards to taste the underside of Harry’s tongue as it explored Tom’s mouth, but never once did Tom offer resistance. He submitted himself wholly to Harry’s touch and kiss and possession. 

He was Harry’s now. 

And he knew it. 

**XXX**


	3. Part III

**Words:** 14,434  
 **The Abyss 3/4**  
December 18th 1937. 10 years old. 1

( **warning: sex & underage** )

A hand caressed the length of his thigh and Tom smiled softly to himself. The hand moved, up and down, teasing the skin of Tom’s leg, and Harry’s other hand was gripped tight around the child’s cock. Tom hummed lightly, tilting his head back so that it rested on Harry’s chest. The elder Wizard was spooned behind him, holding him closely against his front, and his own penis nudging against Tom’s arse. 

“Harry,” the boy moaned. His hips rocked backwards, pressing himself wantonly against Harry’s erection. “Please, please,” he begged in a breathy whisper. 

The hand that had been on Tom’s thigh moved lower, slipping down between their sweaty bodies, and a finger pressed firmly against the puckered ring of muscle that guarded Tom’s entrance. The child gave a soft cry, biting down hard on his bottom lip, as Harry unfalteringly pushed one finger into the boy. A second finger followed, wet with only saliva. Tom groaned, his chin tucked against his chest, and he curled over slightly as if trying to protect himself from the pain, but he didn’t ask Harry to stop and his hips kept undulating in time with Harry stroking his cock. Tom gave a hoarse cry as Harry’s fingers rubbed firmly against his prostate, and he flung his head back, his mouth remaining open as he panted. 

He didn’t ejaculate, but he did release a whimpered, gargled moan, as his hips jerked sporadically. The middle finger of Harry’s other hand was pushing against the slit of Tom’s penis, his nail scrapping at the sensitive head, and the child nearly blacked out from the sensations that raged through his young body. 

When Tom had stopped trembling, Harry removed his hands, curling his fingers so that they scrapped against Tom’s insides and the flesh of his softening penis.2 

“Sit up, Tom,” Harry instructed in his bedroom voice. It was husky and low, his words almost rolled off of his tongue in a purr as Harry leant forward to drip them sensually into Tom’s attentive ear. 

The child scrambled to his knees, turning himself to face Harry who was still hard and spread across the bed. A soft smile curved up Tom’s lips, and he crawled onto Harry, sitting himself directly in the man’s lap. Though he had yet to be penetrated during sex, Tom knew that this was his favourite position, though it was likely not Harry’s. Harry indulged him, on special occasions: like this one, as his Hogwarts letter was due soon. Tom was very careful to sit so that Harry’s cock was wedged between the cheeks of his arse, and he rocked back slowly, forward and back, and smirked smugly to himself as Harry gave a harsh groan of pleasure as Tom bounced on his lap. 

When Harry came across his bum, it was with a shout of Tom’s name, and his nails digging painfully into Tom’s side as he ground himself up one more time, shuddering as his orgasm washed over him. Harry petted the pale, nail-bitten skin softly, pushing Tom to the side and watching blank faced as Tom swirled his pale fingers through Harry’s sperm and sucked them into his mouth. Navy eyes locked onto Harry’s green ones, and Tom licked and sucked the come off of his own backside as Harry watched him transfixed. 

“You should stop now, Tom,” Harry warned in a soft voice, “unless you plan on taking something else into that greedy mouth of yours.” 

( **warning ends** )

Tom’s face flushed crimson, and he turned his head away in embarrassment. He seemed to have no problem performing acts of a sexual nature, nor talking about them, but when Harry teased him about performing such acts Tom would suddenly become shy and unsure, as if afraid that his performance hadn’t been up to par. 

Tom slid from the bed, wiping his fingers against his bare thigh. Harry watched him, still sprawled out across the bed, as Tom crossed to the kitchen and opened the window. An owl swept into the room, dropping a letter onto the bed, and then perching itself on top of the dresser. The photos of Jason and Anna and those other children were still there, turned upside down, under Harry’s copy of The Catcher in the Rye, and the owl scratched at the book in agitation, as if knowing exactly what was hidden beneath it. It turned its head, cocked to one side, eyeing the couple of Wizards with a scary kind of intellect, and Harry was very tempted to kill it. 

Tom’s shout of excitement distracted Harry from his murderous thoughts. 

“I got in! The School you went to accepted me, Harry! I got in!” He whirled around, unashamedly naked and launched himself onto the elder man. 

Harry clung to him, caressing his back with rough hands and wide-splayed fingers, under the watchful eyes of the owl. “Congratulations. I told you that you would, didn’t I? Would I lie to you, Tom?”

“Of course not!” Tom said, sounding scandalised by the very thought. “Do you want to hear what it says?” Tom asked, sitting back on Harry’s thighs with his legs spread on either side of the man. Harry watched the boy, excited and innocent still, and he nodded. “To Mr. Harry’s Tom,” he started off and then frowned. “What is your surname anyway, Harry?”

“It’s Potter,” Harry informed him after a moment’s silence. What harm could it do to tell Tom? The boy didn’t know any other Potters, and there weren’t any at Hogwarts during Tom’s time anyway (just before and afterwards). 

“How come that name wasn’t on the letter?” He asked curiously. 

Harry sighed. “You aren’t a Potter. So they can’t use that name. Now, what does it say?”

“To Mr. Harry’s Tom, the Only Bedroom, Harry’s Flat, Vauxhall Road, London.” Tom smiled, turning the parchment over so that he could read its actual contents. 

**“Dear Mr. Tom,**

**We are pleased to inform you that you have been accepted at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. Please find enclosed a list of all necessary books and equipment.**

**Term begins on September 1st 1938. We await your owl no later than July 31st 1938.**

**Yours sincerely, Minerva McGonagall.”**

Tom finished reading, and folded the parchment back up into a neat, tidy square. He handed Harry the equipment list and smiled widely. “Can we go to Diagon Alley soon?”

“You may be getting a little ahead of yourself there. _Your_ first year at Hogwarts doesn’t start until September of _next_ year.” Harry said, laughing softly. 

“I know that! But I want to get a head start on the course work. Do you know how many books I could read between now and September, Harry? A lot! That’s how many!” 

Harry nodded his head in silence, too stunned by Tom’s sudden resemblance to Hermione to remember how to speak. That would have been like something she would have said. He agreed to take Tom shopping for his school supplies early, but not quite that early. Instead, he promised to take Tom on holiday for his birthday. It was in a fortnight. “Where would you like to go?”

“The seaside,” Tom said firmly. 

The Orphanage had taken them a few years ago, but Harry hadn’t gone with them. Instead, he had remained behind to look after Eric Whalley, and while Tom had never asked either male what had happened during that weekend, there was no doubt in the younger Wizard’s mind that Eric had experienced something that Tom had yet to know for himself. 

Harry. 

_XXX_

December 31st 1937. 11 years old. 

There was a cold wind blowing, and Tom hunched himself over, burrowing his face into his scarf to protect himself from its chill. Harry walked along side him, a smile on his face. Both Wizards were dressed in the full works: hats, scarves, gloves and furry coats. Tom even had Wellington boots on! Harry had taken care to tuck the child’s trousers into his boots carefully, which had been a good idea actually, since Tom’s first course of action upon arriving at the seaside was not to check into their inn, but instead to rush straight into the ocean. Harry had left him playing, and busied himself renting out one of the small cabins that lined the coast. 

There were hotels and inns further in the town, but Harry preferred the privacy that residing on the actual beach would give them. It would be a little more expensive, but the extra money would be worth it in the long run. 

It was their second day of their holiday, and Tom still seemed to be enthralled by the ocean. He looked once at Harry, and after receiving a nod, made his way to the waters edge, his back straight and his shoulders back. It was only once his feet made contact that Tom forgot about acting like a proper Wizard, and indulged in being a kid. He kicked water at the nearest other child, ignoring the girl’s screech of anger, and then laughed as she ran away from him. He turned back to look at Harry, and the man merely raised an eyebrow, not bothered by his unkind behaviour. It hadn’t been anything life threatening, merely average childishness, and so Harry let it pass, as he generally did. 

Their cabin was only a ten-minute walk away from them, on the end of a short line of cabins and mostly isolated. Harry planned to use it to its full advantage later that night, the last night of their short holiday. But for now, Harry sat back on one of the sparse deck chairs sprinkled across the sand, and chuckled lowly as Tom terrorized a few of the other children. Parents glared in his direction, but Harry ignored them, and when one boy who reminded Harry a little too much of Dudley Dursley got splashed in the face because of Tom, Harry laughed out loud. It was loud enough to catch Tom’s attention, and the child turned to grin at Harry widely, proudly. 

It was only with his back to the other children that one of them was brave enough to shove Tom over, knocking the boy on his arse in the water. While Harry thought Tom probably deserved it, he still stood and made his way to intervene before Tom could even think about revenge of any sort. 

“I don’t want to be here anymore.” Tom groused, kicking sand up with his shoe petulantly as Harry led his further down the line of water. “Let’s go somewhere else.”

“You wanted the seaside, Tom, so we came to the seaside. There isn’t much more than sea and side, I promise you.” Harry said with a sigh, looking down at the grumpy and wet boy in annoyance. 

“There is something else!” Tom exclaimed, remembering the cave that had so fascinated him the first time he visited the ocean. Amy Benson and Dennis Bishop had gone exploring together and Tom had trailed curiously after them, but neither child had been willing to go _into_ the cave with Tom, though all three stood together and looked inside. They hadn’t let Tom go in on his own either, which honestly Tom wasn’t too bothered about. He’d much rather explore the cavern with Harry there. “I bet you’ll like it. Come on, it’s this way!” He took Harry by the hand and tugged. 

With a shake of his head, Harry acquiesced and allowed Tom to drag him away from the cabins and the sand and the other tourists. They were almost out of walking space, the ground completely washed away by sea, and Harry scowled as a wave broke over his toes. Tom pointed out into the distance, and Harry could see a cave a few miles over, seemingly floating in water. 

“How did you discover that?” Harry asked, frowning. 

“Our hotel was closer to that side, than this side. There’s more sand here though, so it’s nicer, but it was only a five minutes walk from where Mrs. Cole let us play to that cave.” Tom paused, nibbling on his bottom lip. “I was wondering what you were getting me for my birthday?”

Tom rarely asked about gifts though he had at last begun to expect them. Harry shook his head, indicating that he had yet to purchase anything. This didn’t surprise nor upset Tom. He was rather used to being taken shopping for gifts. While Harry loved him, Harry was also terrible at shopping for others. 

“I want to visit the cave with you for my birthday.” Tom said, squaring his shoulders, as he stood up straighter, hoping to be taken seriously. 

“Ok.” Harry said. Tom blinked, expecting more of a fight, since usually Harry only gave him expensive things, and then he grinned widely and wrapped his arms around Harry’s waist. “Hold on tight, and don’t move.” Harry took a quick look around, and upon determining the coast was clear (literally), he apparated them both to the mouth of a cave he and Dumbledore had once explored together. 

“Wow!” Tom grinned, “It’s creepy in here.”

“Trust you to like it.” Harry gave Tom’s shoulder a tap, a mockery of a playful punch. “Let’s go then?” He asked, and Tom happily took the lead, rushing into the cave without waiting for Harry. 

When the child was finished exploring, he found Harry lying down on the floor. There was dust everywhere, except near Harry and Tom grinned as he realized Harry must have magicked the dirt away. Tom lowered himself down, sitting beside Harry’s knees, and he smiled over at the elder Wizard trustingly. “Thank you. For coming here with me.”

“You’ll be at Hogwarts this time next year,” Harry said softly. 

“No I won’t.” Tom said, laughing. “I’ll be home for Christmas, this time next year, remember?” 

Harry turned his head, a small smile flitting across his mouth. “Only if you aren’t having fun at school. I used to spend Christmas at Hogwarts, you know.”

“Well.” Tom’s eyebrows furrowed. “I’ll be spending it with you! Unless you don’t want me?” His eyes lowered, lashes feathered against his pale cheeks, and Harry reached over to tilt Tom’s chin back up. 

“I will always want you.” Harry said, “If you’re good.” Tom offered him a shy smile, and scooted closer. “In fact, I had planned to give you a birthday present tonight at the cabin, but if you’d rather explore an abandoned cave-” Harry trailed off, shrugging his shoulders. 

“What was it?” Tom asked sounding horrified. What if it had been something amazing? What if Harry sent it back to the store? 

“You’re eleven now. I was at Hogwarts when I was your age, taking care of myself, practically an adult. The same can be said for you, can’t it Tom? You aren’t a child any longer.”

“Of course not,” Tom exclaimed. He rather preferred to be thought of as an adult, a very short adult, but mature and capable nonetheless. Mrs. Cole didn’t really bother to take care of the older kids, and Tom much preferred to be left to his own devises and under Harry’s care than subject to the rules and regulations that had plagued his early childhood. 

“I think it’s time **I** started treating you like an adult too, hmm?” 

Tom narrowed his eyes, avidly watching Harry’s face for reassurance. The elder Wizard watched him calmly; eyes smiling and mouth smirking and Tom couldn’t tell if Harry really meant what Tom thought he did. He would just have to risk it. With shaking hands, he peeled off his gloves and scarf and dropped them to the ground in the dirt. The buttons of his shirt were opened slowly, and Tom’s fingers trembled and slipped and missed under Harry’s predatory gaze. And still, Harry didn’t confirm or deny Tom’s suspicions. But Tom continued to undress. 

Eventually, he was kneeling naked, shivering from the cold of the air and the cave’s floor. Harry reached over, grabbed hold of Tom’s arm and pulled the boy into his lap. “Are we really going to, you know?” Tom asked shyly. 

“If you can’t say the word, then you can’t be considered mature enough to-” 

Tom’s mouth dropped open and Harry moved to shove him away, but his mouth sealed harshly over Harry’s words, swallowing them with furious kisses. “I want you to fuck me!” His hands were still shaking, but Tom’s jaw was set with stubbornness and his chest was heaving in lust, and Harry felt his groin stirring again. “I need you to fuck me.”

“I bet you do,” Harry murmured. 

( **warning: sex & underage** )

His mouth was against Tom’s neck, nibbling lightly on the pale skin available, and his long fingers were making quick work of his belt and fly. He had been waiting so long. Harry couldn’t remember quite how long he had been waiting to taste Tom, to enjoy and claim and **own** him, but it had been such a long time he knew. But the wait was over. Tom would be his. Tonight, Tom would be _all his_. 

When Harry was undressed as well, after what seemed like an age had passed, he leant forward to press his mouth lightly to Tom’s throat. The child tilted his head back, offering himself willingly up to the elder Wizard. Without any prompting whatsoever, Tom crawled into Harry’s lap. This was the position he favoured as Harry rubbed against him, this was the way he’d prefer to have Harry, but Tom knew it wouldn’t be this way. Harry wouldn’t let him have that much control, especially not for his first time, but he could enjoy it while Harry was distracted, head thrown back and groaning as Tom ground down slowly. Harry looked up at the boy, eyes half-lidded and his mouth open. His hands moved to Tom’s waist, gripping tight enough to bruise as he twisted, flipping the boy onto his back and moving to hover over him. 

“Uh huh,” Harry muttered against Tom’s pale neck. Light kisses were pressed across soft skin, one after another until Harry reached Tom’s lips, and he stole him in a furious kiss. “I am in charge here, my little Tom.” 

“ _Yes_!” Tom hissed out, agreeing immediately as Harry’s hand slipped from his waist to his groin, fondling him. 

“You are mine, Tom,” Harry said, his voice soft and raspy; a consequence of spending more than a year screaming under Voldemort’s torture and never having been healed properly even after nine more years as the Dark Lord’s whore. 

“All yours,” Tom whimpered, Harry’s hand stroking him with long, sure movements. “Please, please, please Harry,” he begged, writhing on the dirty cavern floor. 

Harry moved so that he was kneeling over Tom, and Tom pulled his legs up and pushed them apart, bearing himself to Harry’s view. This wouldn’t be the first time that Harry had put his fingers inside of Tom, but it would be the first time Tom was fully penetrated, the first time that Harry would love him completely, wholly, the way adults and lovers were meant to. 

“Do it now, Harry.” Tom commanded, arching his back, pushing his arse forward as if to encourage Harry to take him then and there, unprepared. 

Harry considered it. He looked down on Tom, kneeling between the boy’s spread legs, and considered spitting on his hand and rubbing it on his cock, then pushing forward, forcing his way into the boy, the way Voldemort had forced his way into him. 

But no, that would be detrimental to his plans. Tom needed to _love_ this, so much so that even when he realised that he had been abused and manipulated for the majority of his childhood he would still _crave_ Harry’s touch. Tom needed to always belong to Harry, regardless of whether Tom wanted to or not. That would be his vengeance on the Voldemort that would never exist. Harry would own him, completely, always. 

So he pressed one finger to Tom’s closed mouth, waiting until the boy opened his mouth and sucked the finger inside, tongue swirling around the digit wantonly, before he continued to stroke Tom’s cock. Tom ended up sucking on four of Harry’s fingers, before the adult deemed them wet enough, his cheeks bulging and his lips puffy and red from being stretched. Harry pulled his fingers out, dipping his head down to press a slow kiss to the wet lips that parted instinctively for his tongue. 

“Lift up your hips, Tom,” Harry whispered. His fingers probed at Tom’s entrance, the puckered muscle protested at first, before relenting, allowing Harry to push one finger inside first and then another, twisting and stretching and scissoring, until eventually all four were inside opening Tom up for him. 

The child was flushed and panting, and while Harry knew Tom was enjoying it, the boy couldn’t hide the winces as pain lanced up his spine with every writhe and wriggle. Harry couldn’t wait to see the boy crying out beneath him, from pain or from pleasure; it didn’t matter to him at this point. He was painfully hard, ready and waiting, and all that was missing was the lube on his cock. 

He didn’t have to say anything. Harry merely curled his fingers into the hair at the back of Tom’s head, and the boy sat up. He crawled forward, lying on his belly so that his mouth could reach Harry’s cock and without hesitation Tom wrapped his lips around the swollen flesh and began to suck. 

Tom found himself still lying face-first on the ground when Harry pulled away from him. A hand on Tom’s shoulder stopped the boy’s attempt to sit up, and Harry shuffled on his knees around the boy so he was once more behind Tom. 

“Lift your hips again.”

Harry’s fingers were prodding him again, nails scrapping at the sensitive skin around his entrance and behind his scrotum and then down the underside of his hard cock. And then he was lining himself up, one hand gripping the base of his erection and the other squeezing Tom’s left hip tightly, and then he was pushing forward, slow for the first attempt and then harder the second time when Tom tensed up. 

“Relax, Tom, or it will hurt more. I don’t want to hurt you.” 

“I-I know,” the boy whimpered, his cheek against the floor and his hips raised, gripped tight by long tanned fingers, and Harry was leaning over him, pressing kisses to his pale shoulders. Harry tried again, this time managing to get the head of his cock inside before Tom tensed up too much for him to move.

“Relax,” Harry said again. 

He reached to the side, scrabbling for the wand that was tucked into the pocket of his discarded trousers. One hand grabbed hold of it and without Tom noticing Harry managed to cast a preparation spell on him: it was something he had learnt at Voldemort’s hands, spells to stretch and lube him, spells to make him feel so full already that by the time there was a cock inside of him he felt empty in comparison. To know there were such spells, ones that would have taken a second to cast compared to the time that would have been wasted manually preparing him, spells that Voldemort had chosen not to cast, had angered him. But he used one now on Tom, and the channel that was clenched tightly around the tip of his cock relaxed suddenly. Harry pressed inside, in one smooth thrust, burying himself (or as much of himself as he could, considering the size of Tom’s body) into the willing child beneath him. 

Tom gave a gasp, panting heavily with his eyes squeezed closed, and feeling charitable Harry waited a moment for him to adjust to the strange feeling of being filled. The child was the first to move, pushing his hips back, fingers scrabbling against stone as he tried to push himself up, to give himself more leverage, to make more of Harry fit inside of him. He only had to look back over his shoulder to see that some of Harry hadn’t gone inside of him, and realistically he knew he was small, he was eleven for Merlin’s sake, but he still wanted to have all of Harry, every inch of him. At Tom’s thrust, Harry drew back, watching as his cock slipped from Tom’s body, revealing itself an inch at a time, red and ready, and he looked at Tom’s hole, puckered and bleeding just a little but clenching around his length as if trying to keep him inside. 

He pushed back in, hard. And Tom cried out. 

“More!” He gasped, as Harry struck his prostate dead on. “More!” He shouted again, as Harry reached down to squeeze his balls softly, before rolling them in the palm of his hand. That hand was back on his cock again; Harry’s free hand on Tom’s hip still. 

They moved that way together; until Tom began to buck wildly beneath him, body tensing like a bow, and Harry reached down to clamp his fingers around the base of Tom’s cock, stopping his approaching ejaculation. Harry pulled back, pulling Tom with him so that the boy was lying flat on the ground, with his legs spread at an uncomfortable angle. Harry continued to thrust above him, within him, their position meant he could only manage quick, shallow jabs of his cock, but it also meant that with every one of Harry’s thrusts Tom’s cock drug against the stone ground. It was a torturous sort of pleasure; the boy was so close to his orgasm, and yet the pleasure that had been Harry’s hand was now the rough friction of the floor, of stone against his flesh and it was probably going to scratch or cut him, but Tom didn’t care right then. He pressed down, against the ground, beginning to enjoy the pain as it was coupled with the pleasure of Harry’s rubbing his prostate with his cock at every movement. 

And when Harry came, he gave one last harsh jab, making Tom scream out and something tear within him. But as Tom screamed, star exploded behind his eyes, and his body jerked as he released himself against the dirty floor and his stomach.2 He lay, panting, in Harry’s arms, Harry having collapsed on top of him and wrapped his arms around Tom’s neck loosely. 

( **end warnings** )

“I love you,” Tom whispered, his mouth moving against stone. 

Harry pressed a kiss to Tom’s shoulder blade, mouth moving so lightly that Tom couldn’t hear the words, but he could feel Harry’s lips writing them onto his skin: “I love you.” 

His heart beat fast in his chest. His back and bum hurt, very much in fact, and Tom considered asking for a pain-relief spell of some kind, but then decided against it. For the rest of his birthday he would welcome the pain, he would cherish it, keeping it for the night as a reminder of what he now was. 

Harry’s. 

_XXX_

July 12th 1938. 11 years old.

“Tom,” Mrs Cole said as she pushed open the door to his little bedroom in Stockwell Orphanage. “There’s someone here to see you. He says he’s a teacher.”

“He can come in,” Tom offered in a soft voice. He sat at the edge of his bed, with his hands folded in his lap, and he tried to calm his nerves because there was no way someone could _revoke_ his invitation to Hogwarts. They couldn’t do that, not after having already extended the invitation. Which meant that Harry had been right and a Professor was coming to speak to him, because they thought he was Muggleborn. 

Tom chuckled then, shaking his head at his foolishness. Of course Harry was right. Harry was always right, and he never lied: Tom should have known better than to doubt Harry, but he had been so nervous as the year passed and no one came to tell him about Hogwarts. But they were here now, and Harry would laugh at his silliness and whisper ‘I told you so, love’ against the shell of his ear as they curled around each other in Harry’s wonderful bed. 

“Hello Tom, my name is Professor Albus Dumbledore.” 

“Hello, sir.” Tom didn’t know this man, but he knew better than to be disrespectful to an adult. Because that was rude, and Harry hated it when people were rude. 

In his hand was his Hogwarts letter, half scrunched up and half hidden behind his back, but Dumbledore caught sight of it. “Ah. So you got a letter! I must say, your name wasn’t on the Register and so I had assumed, wrongly it appears, that you’d have no idea what I was speaking of.” The redheaded man smiled jovially, but Tom only stared calmly back. 

“Harry explained it to me.” He whispered his voice low and carefully pitched to the way Harry preferred to hear him speak: soft and seductive, drawling out the words while hands skimmed over exposed flesh. “I’ve accepted my place at Hogwarts already.” 

“Harry?” Dumbledore asked. “Would this be the Mr Harry Mrs Cole was referring to?” Tom just kept staring. “She said I was lucky to catch you, that you usually stayed with your foster father, a Doctor Harry someone though no one seems to know his surname off the top of their heads.”

“Potter,” Tom offered, knowing that Harry wasn’t making a secret out of it, so he didn’t bother either. “And yes, sir, that’s him. It was his home to which my letter arrived.” 

Dumbledore held out his hand, “may I see it?” A moment passed, before Tom gave a soft sigh and held his hand out too. The parchment transferred persons easily, though Tom looked a little reluctant to give it away even for a moment. “To Mr Harry’s Tom,” Dumbledore read from the back of the parchment, the part that would have served as the front when it was folded up correctly. “The only bedroom, Harry’s flat, Vauxhall Road, London…. Well…” He trailed off, not knowing what to say, but many thoughts were floating through his mind, all of them rather worrying. “Only bedroom, you say?” He asked, shaking the letter lightly before handing it back to Tom. 

Tom snatched it from him, hurrying to tuck it away safe within his pocket in case Dumbledore tried to steal it. 

“He only has a small flat. He wasn’t expecting to take me in, you see, and well it wouldn’t be fair of me to make him move homes. He’s saving up though. While I’m in Hogwarts he’ll have time to work more so he’s going to earn more and look for somewhere else for us to live.” Not to say that Tom wouldn’t insist on sleeping in the same bed anyway, but at least then it wouldn’t look so suspicious to people like Albus nosy Dumbledore, Tom thought petulantly. What did it matter where he slept anyway? Anywhere was better than the orphanage!

“Tom,” Dumbledore began to say, before pausing to bite his bottom lip nervously. Mrs Cole had rambled on and on about Harry but Dumbledore hadn’t paid the Muggle much attention because after all he had journeyed there to speak to a _Tom Riddle_ , not a Harry. Though thinking back on it, the number of times both Harry and Tom had been mentioned in the same sentence was rather worrying in light of the ‘only bedroom’ issue. 

“How come my surname wasn’t on the letter?” Tom asked suddenly. 

“What?” Dumbledore asked. “Oh, I see. Well, my boy, as you weren’t registered by your parents you shouldn’t have been sent a letter. Those are written by a magical artefact, not looked over by humans, so the lack of surname would have gone unnoticed. With the assumption that he is also a Wizard, since he already spoke with you about your acceptance letter, I can only surmise that because Mr Potter is fostering you, you were partially accepted into his family and so couldn’t use your name, but because you were not adopted you couldn’t use his name either. And so, you were left nameless. Though I am here to formally invite Tom Marvolo Riddle to Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry this coming September first.”

Tom nodded his head lightly, understanding what the Professor meant. “So, am I going as Riddle or as Harry’s?” Tom wondered. He looked rather put out once Dumbledore responded with ‘Riddle’ instead of the answer he had been hoping for. 

“I mean no offence but as your future teacher and thus guardian for the year I must ask, has Mr Potter ever touched you in an inappropriate manner?”

“Define inappropriate.” Tom crossed his arms over his chest and scowled, while Dumbledore raised one ginger eyebrow in surprise. 

“In a manner that you don’t like, or that shouldn’t happen between a child and an adult, or in a way that makes you feel pain or discomfort or embarrassment or confusion.” Tom didn’t answer, and unknowing in which way to interpret the child’s silence, Dumbledore released another sigh. “Mr Riddle, I propose that you spend the remainder of the summer at this orphanage, and I’ll have local authorities investigate Mr Potter, for his own good of course. What do you think?”

Tom’s lips curled back, almost snarling at the elder Wizard. “HOW DARE YOU?” He screamed, launching himself forward with his hands out, pushing at Dumbledore’s chest, trying to shove the intruder out of his room. “NO! NO!” Tom screamed hysterically, terrified of being separated from Harry. This was what Harry had warned him about, Tom thought, when the children had murdered his pet snake and Harry had admitted that they both had magic. This was what Harry said would happen if anyone found out that Tom and Harry knew each other. They were trying to take Harry away, to keep Tom away from him; they couldn’t, Tom screamed, they wouldn’t!

“GET OUT!” Tom shrieked. His magic fluctuated around him, sensing his fear and confusion, his anger, and it surged out, lashing at anything and everything it could reach in an attempt to protect its host. Like the time Tom had shoved Helen Doyle out of a window accidentally, and the time he made cracks appear in the canteen walls, and the time Billy Stubb’s rabbit had just floated up in the air and dropped down dead, Tom’s magic was reacting to his emotions. 

Dumbledore raised his hands up, trying to placate the boy. Mrs Cole and Martha came running into the room, screaming about the wardrobe, bed and table that were shaking as if caught in an earthquake, and the child that was trembling with so much rage they could taste it in the air. 

“Get him,” Mrs Cole hissed. Martha ran from the room, knowing where Harry worked and knowing he must be at work if Tom was willingly spending time at the orphanage; she ran to find him. 

Albus watched, as the staff tried to calm Tom down unsuccessfully, and he watched as Martha came back, panting but happy as Harry ran into the room after her and pulled Tom into his arms. Albus watched as the boy relaxed completely, with Mr Potter’s arms around his shoulders and his face buried into the crook of Harry’s neck as he sobbed lightly and his magic calmed down and Harry whispered soft words of reassurance into Tom’s ears that Albus only wished he could hear. 

There was something very… odd about this situation, he decided. 

_XXX_

September 1st 1938. 11 years old. 

“Oi,” a loud voice called from over his shoulder. “Mudblood!” It called again.

Tom sat stiffly at the Slytherin table. He had only been sorted moments ago, and the feast had barely started, but that was obviously enough time for the elder boy to have passed judgement on Tom. 

Or, rather, his surname. 

“Mudblood,” the boy said again, shoving Tom’s shoulder so hard that Tom who had been trying to eat ended up stabbing himself in the cheek with his fork. “Riddle isn’t a Pureblood name. You don’t belong here, scum.” And then the boy walked away. 

Tom watched him go through narrowed eyes, laying the fork slowly down on his plate. Children were cruel, Harry had told him, they’d grow out of it, Harry had promised him, don’t react to them or they’ll target you more, Harry had suggested to him. He glanced over at the staff table and found Dumbledore staring at him. Adults were stupid too, Tom thought, thinking about the Professor telling him that he would be enrolled as ‘Tom _Riddle_ ’.

He’d much rather be known as Harry’s. 

_XXX_

November 13th 1939. 12 years old. 

“Hey, Mudblood, I’m talking at you.” That same voice called again, and Tom gritted his teeth at the sound of it. “Oi, learn some respect, filth, and answer when once of us address you.” He gave Tom a shove, and the boy toppled forward down the last three steps of the staircase they were all standing on. 

Tom had hoped the staircase would move before Prewitt and his friends caught up with him, but he hadn’t been so lucky, and instead he had jogged down the stairs, trying to escape the fourteen year old boys chasing him, and was almost off the stairs when they grabbed him and pushed. He wasn’t hurt, just humiliated, and his ink vial had smashed against the ground, breaking all over and destroyed his Transfiguration essay: as if Dumbledore didn’t already dislike him enough. 

“What do you want?”

“You could drop dead?” Prewitt suggested, while his friends chuckled and Tom hauled himself to his feet. “Or you could go back to your filthy Muggle parents and never come back. Oh wait!” They laughed harder, “You don’t have parents, do you! Not even Muggles wanted to keep you, Mudblood!” 

They left him there, shaking with anger and humiliation, late for Transfigurations with no homework to turn in, and a taste for revenge heavy in his mouth. But he held himself back, because Harry wouldn’t like him if he misbehaved. 

_XXX_

November 28th 1939. 12 years old. 

Tom was at Hogwarts. 

Tom was probably still being bullied at Hogwarts, as his weekly letters often consisted of complaints about his fellow Slytherins picking on him and the rest of his year mates shunning him. Harry had always replied with the same crap about being the only person Tom needed, that Tom would ever need. But, he thought with a frown, if that also worked the other way around? 

Since Tom had been gone, Harry had been having dreams; more like reoccurring nightmares, where he would live through the memories of his past as he slept, unable to escape until something Voldemort did or said shocked him awake. He found he missed waking to the feel of Tom curled against him. 

Harry lay in his bed, without Tom beside him, too afraid to drift back to sleep. It had been eight years since he had escaped from Voldemort, fleeing into the past and conditioning Tom to behave as Voldemort had _forced_ Harry to behave. But the memories still haunted him, and Harry still woke hard and panting despite dreaming about the Dark Lord of everything vile and evil. 

This was what he wanted Tom to suffer through, Harry thought, eyes slipping closed. To hate and to hurt, and yet to want, need, desire, desperate for more despite how depraved it was, how wrong and sick and painful; forever haunted, marked by someone else, unresponsive to anyone else. There would only be Harry in Tom’s life now, and one day Tom might hate that. But he would still love Harry. 

He slipped back into sleep. And then he was there, back at Malfoy Manor, on his knees before the Dark Lord Voldemort, surrounded by Death Eaters and the Minister for Magic and his entourage. He was naked, and Voldemort was sitting behind him, hands massaging Harry’s shoulders gently as his fingers trembled.

“I’ve changed my mind,” the Wizard whispered, voice deadly and low. 

Harry bit back a gasp of relief, thighs trembling as Voldemort hauled him to his feet. He prayed for one stupid second that he would be spared, that someone would take pity on him. The gathered Wizards looked outraged and disappointed, because Voldemort had offered them all a turn with Harry Potter, to punish the boy for something that he couldn’t even recall and to reward the Minister for his recent electoral win. They had all looked forward to taking their turn behind Harry Potter, with the boy on his hands and knees, spread and screaming for them, and yet here was Voldemort, revoking his promise. 

He was a jealous and possessive man, and it had been his anger at Harry attempting to attack him that had motivated such a reaction, such a promise from him. Normally, he would never have considered loaning his pet to anyone else. Harry was his concubine, his whore, and only his. But Harry feared having others use him, touch him and abuse him. Voldemort knew that Harry could barely tolerate _him_ touching his body, and he knew that Harry would never repeat that same mistake if he used this punishment on him. But now, watching those Wizards tent their trousers and salivate over his Harry was making rage bubble within his chest. 

“I’ve changed my mind.” He said again, and no one dared to complain this time. “Harry is mine. And only mine.” 

Harry tried not to cry, the relief so strong within him that at first he didn’t notice Voldemort lead him towards the back of the sofa instead of the door. Then Voldemort was pushing him forward and down, bending him over the back of the sofa, and pushing forward, forcing him into Harry’s unprepared body, stealing one of those other men’s pleasure for his own and making Harry scream, right there, in front of everyone. Those men sat and watched him, some stroking themselves through their robes and others pulling their cocks free, watching Harry write and struggle beneath Voldemort’s brutal grip. 

“Mine,” he snarled, “all mine,” and Harry shot up like a light, gasping and panting in his bed with his pyjama pants sticky with his seed. 

_XXX_

January 19th 1941. 14 years old. 3

He had been putting up with it for three and a half years. Three and a half years of bullying and abuse and turning the other fucking cheek because it was what Harry would want even though Hogwarts was supposed to be different, and yet it was so much like living at the orphanage that some days Tom wondered why he even bothered. Three and a half years, and now Tom had had enough. 

Prewitt curled around himself on the floor by Tom’s feet, and the younger Slytherin looked down at him with an angry scowl. 

“Enough,” Tom whispered, thinking back on what he had discovered earlier that day in the library. Harry had known. Harry must have known. It was hereditary, Harry had told him years ago, back when Tom was still a child. Parseltongue was hereditary. 

He cast a curse on the elder Slytherin, watching with glee as the boy screamed and writhed before him, at his mercy when Tom had no mercy to spare. “I am the Heir of Slytherin,” he whispered and Anthony Prewitt barely heard him over his screams. By this time tomorrow, everyone would know who Tom was. He wasn’t a Mudblood. He wasn’t even a regular half-blood, because he was the Heir to Salazar Slytherin and in his mind that made him as Pureblooded as the filth who was crying and begging at his feet. More so, in fact, Tom thought, looking down on the pathetic mess and casting another Dark curse. 

“You will bow before me now, Prewitt.” Tom told him, “All of you will.”

When he left the boy alone, Prewitt was only capable of crying and shaking. He would later be taken to St Mungos for treatment, but no one would be able to prove that Tom had done anything to him, though Harry could guess once news of the boy’s attack hit the newspapers. 

He had written to Harry that same night. His quill denting the parchment as in his anger Tom pressed down to hard, ripping the sheet in places. He scrawled angrily, questions about Salazar Slytherin and why Harry had lied to him. 

Harry had only replied with one sentence, and as he read it Tom felt his fury reach boiling point. How dare that hypocrite! Tom thought angrily, how dare Harry! He promised himself that he wouldn’t go back, wouldn’t crawl for someone who would lie to him, told himself he’d stay at Hogwarts this summer, that he’d finally take up the offer Dumbledore had been trying to force on him since his first year. Dumbledore wanted Tom away from Harry, and Tom wanted as much space between them as possible right now. He told himself, as he re-read the one line letter, that he wouldn’t miss Harry at all, even as his body still ached from the times Harry had taken him over the Yule break.

“ **I never lied to you, as you never asked.** ” 

Tom set the note on fire with a flick of his wand and a whispered spell, and he watched as it burned, fighting back the urge to reach out and rescue Harry’s note, to horde it with the rest of the things Harry had ever given him or written to him. He was pathetic, he thought, as the letter turned to ash. 

_XXX_

December 22nd 1941. 14 years old. 

Tom had managed to avoid Harry for the summer between his fourth and fifth year, but he hadn’t spent a birthday alone since he was four-years-old, and he didn’t want to start now. So when Yule came around again, Tom refrained from signing the register that meant he would be staying at Hogwarts, instead he packed his things and followed his school-mates to Hogsmeade to board the Express home. 

Home. He had thought about the meaning of the word for the entire train ride, and he was still no closer to understanding what it meant. Did it mean that as long as Harry was with him, he was home? Or was Hogwarts his home, where he was taught things and could experience things, and now had a group of followers who succumbed to his every whim? Or perhaps the orphanage was his real home, the place where he had been born, where he had started life? Though he was fourteen now, the summer that he had skipped out on would have been his last year at Stockwell. He would never have to go back, Tom realized. He could spend all of his time with Harry now, or at Hogwarts, and when he graduated, surely Harry would still desire and love him. 

But he was angry with Harry still, for keeping things from him, for keeping secrets even if Tom could admit the man hadn’t actually lied. Did he really want to go back to Harry? 

He couldn’t go to the orphanage. The train was almost at King’s Cross Station now, so he couldn’t go back to Hogwarts. Merlin, he thought, had he even told Harry that he was coming back? Would Harry even be there to collect him? 

Harry was there, waiting with his arms crossed while he leant back against the wall. He looked patient, and he stayed silent until Tom approached him. “Dumbledore wrote and said you were returning for the break.”

“Yeah,” Tom said softly, scuffing his shoe against the ground. “I’m still angry with you.” He told the elder Wizard, following dutifully as Harry led the way out off of the platform and down into the underground, to catch a train to Vauxhall Road. 

Harry didn’t speak for the rest of the journey, and Tom half regretted his brash words. He wasn’t angry enough to compensate for Harry ignoring him, or hating him, but he couldn’t bring himself to apologize. He didn’t have it in him, not now, not yet, not after having been away from Harry for so long, not after escaping physical abuse for so many years. The fear just wasn’t in him anymore, and Harry knew it too. But that would change soon, Harry promised himself, glancing at Tom’s sullen expression from the corner of his eyes. 

( **warning: sex & underage** )

The moment they closed the door to Harry’s little flat behind them, Tom turned and pushed himself hard against Harry’s chest. He wouldn’t apologize, but he could do this. He would offer himself up, he would enjoy every moment with his lover, and he would revel in the feelings that only Harry could stir up within him. He would pant and moan and scream and Harry would know that he was forgiven without Tom ever having to say a word. 

“You owe me,” Tom hissed against the shell of Harry’s ear. Harry pushed the teenager backwards, until Tom lay sprawled across the small sofa. Without hesitation, Tom rolled onto his stomach, his legs still hanging over the arm rest, and said, “You didn’t tell me. The least you could do is fuck me.” 

And so Harry did. Tom loved every second of it, even though Harry’s grip was harsher than normal, and his thrusts were furious and painful, and the adult kept biting down on his neck and shoulder hard enough to draw blood. When Harry came, he snarled against the back of Tom’s neck and pulled away, leaving the boy still hard and writhing, but unattended to. Tom rolled over, his legs still spread, still offering himself to Harry, as he stroked himself hurriedly, desperate to orgasm. Harry’s come was smeared across Tom’s arse and thighs, dribbling out of the clenching hole, wet and sticky, and mixed with a hint of blood. 

Tom slept after his orgasm, eyes closed in bliss, never knowing that Harry had raised his wand to him and cast him into sleep. And as Tom slept, Harry cleaned him up, and gathered him into his arms, holding him tightly against his chest. 

( **end warnings** )

It was time for Tom to be reminded of what he truly was. No more of this Heir of Slytherin greater-than-thou nonsense. No more backchat or backbone. It was time for Harry to remind Tom of who, exactly, was in charge in this relationship. 

When Tom woke, it was hours later and there were horribly loud noises echoing all around him. Air raid sirens, Tom realized, because they were in the middle of a war. He was no longer at Hogwarts, where they were safe and protected, and he was obviously not inside of Harry’s flat, where magic would keep them safe. He was back at the orphanage, even though he was too old, and he was lying on the floor in a room with everyone else, all crushed together as the noises wailed around them, warning and terrifying them in equal turns. 

“Why am I here?” Tom asked, trying to sit up. He could barely move without pain lancing up his spine and down his thighs. Harry had been brutal with him, but Tom didn’t regret it, didn’t resent it. But it was making it hard to move, and Tom needed to move, needed to go and get back to Harry, but Mrs Cole was there with a hand on his shoulder, pushing him back to the floor. 

“Mr Harry said you didn’t have anywhere else to go until you graduated. He’s agreed to pay for your board and keep, and we’ve agreed to continue housing you until you turn eighteen and leave that boarding school of yours.” She told him, her voice nasally and cold. She looked down on him, the lines of her face standing out against the paleness of her skin, and her mouth turned down as she eyed the bruises along the side of his throat. 

Tom’s hand came up to cover Harry’s marks. His heart was pounding in his chest, with fear, with the shame that accompanied crying in front of an audience, and with hopelessness. Had last night been Harry saying goodbye to him? Harry had left him, truly, he thought to himself, trying to make the words sound right in his mind. How could this be? Harry had loved him… 

Tom gasped, his eyes flying to meet Mrs Cole’s. “Did he say he was coming back?” She shrugged at him, before walking away to comfort some of the younger children who had also begun to cry. Maybe Harry thought Tom didn’t love him anymore, and that was why he had left. Had Tom driven him away? 

He pulled his knees to his chest, burying his face into his arms, continuing to sob quietly as the sirens blocked out all other sounds but the frantic, terrified beating of his heart. 

Harry was gone. 

_XXX_

December 29th 1941. 14 years old. 

It had been seven days. The sirens had been wailing almost constantly, and as secluded by magic as Tom had been for the last year and a half he hadn’t realised how much the war had been affecting London. It was terrifying, to be locked inside of the orphanage for fear of a bomb dropping on his head if he ventured outside. He was too afraid to make his way to Harry’s flat, to see if Harry was still living there, waiting for Tom. He couldn’t find any owls or pigeons flying about, and so he couldn’t send Harry a letter. And Harry still hadn’t come back. 

It had been seven days, but Tom had finally realised how stupid he had been. 

He should have come home last summer. He should have thrown himself into Harry’s arms on platform nine and three-quarters and never have gotten angry about the Slytherin thing. Who cares about Slytherin, Tom mentally shouted. Harry was gone, and that was all that mattered now. Harry was gone and so nothing else could matter. 

“Hello Tom,” a voice softly said. 

He had been lying on his bed in his old bedroom because the staff hadn’t gotten around to housing anyone in it yet. Harry had made sure it was still free for him, Tom was sure. Usually he spent his days crowded in the shelter with the others, but today was the first day in a week that there had been no signs of the German planes, and it had been deemed safe for the children to sleep in their appointed rooms. 

But at the sound of the voice, he sat up straight in his bed, eyes wide and disbelieving. 

“You’ve come back!” He breathed, heart racing. He couldn’t quite believe what he was seeing. After seven days without Harry, he was there now, standing stiffly in front of Tom as the boy ran forward, pressing his face to Harry’s neck and sobbing desperately. “Don’t ever leave again! Never leave me! I’m so sorry, I am, I’m so sorry. I’ll _never, ever, ever_ behave like that again. I was stupid and foolish and _angry_ , and I shouldn’t have been because I should have _known_ that you’d _never lie_ to me, or do anything to hurt me. I’m such an idiot! No wonder you hate me,” Tom finished with a distressed sob. “Don’t hate me,” he added in a whisper. 

“I don’t hate you, Tom.” Harry told him, hands lightly running up and down Tom’s back. “I’m just very disappointed in you.”

“I’m sorry!” Tom breathed, tilting his head back and raising his chin. He waited, hoped that Harry would do what he wanted, because surely Harry couldn’t have forgotten what the chin movement meant after only seven days.

Harry gave a soft sigh. “Last chance, Tom. I don’t like people who don’t behave themselves.” Harry leant down slightly, because Tom was nearly as tall as him now when he stood up straight, and he brushed his lips lightly over Tom’s pursed ones, comforting and assuring him the way they used to do when Tom was a child in need of reassurance. 

“Never leave me,” Tom begged, hands shaking as he reached up to cup Harry’s cheeks. He pulled the man’s head down for a real kiss, and Harry melted into the touch, having missed the touch of the younger boy. 

“Only if you behave.” Came the standard reply, and Tom nodded feverently, clinging tightly to his saviour and abuser, and Harry smirked smugly into Tom’s black hair, pleased that his plan had worked and a little surprised by how much Tom had fallen apart without him. It made him tingle inside, just thinking how completely Tom actually did belong to him, how desperately Tom needed him now. 

He pressed a kiss to the top of Tom’s head, before pushing him back towards the little orphanage bed. With a wave of his wand the door was closed and Tom was naked. Without needed to be touched, Tom was hard and willing and ready, legs spreading on either side of Harry’s hips and back arched, offering himself up like he had been trained to do. 

And Harry grinned again. 

Then he took him, uncaring who would hear Tom scream, because Muggles could be _Obliviated_ easily. And when the sirens started to wail again, Tom ignored them. He didn’t push Harry away and run towards the shelter to cower and hide. Instead, he spread his legs wider, wrapped them tighter around the elder Wizard, and bared his throat, because this was all that matter. As long as he had Harry, he was happy. And Harry would keep him safe. 

_XXX_

April 12th 1943. 16 years old. 3

Harry thrashed from side to side, bucking his hips and rolling his head. This wasn’t happening, he told himself, as Tom hovered above him, pushing within him. It wasn’t real. This hadn’t happened in twelve years, he told himself sternly; Voldemort didn’t exist anymore. 

But he was there, above him, within him. With each thrust of Voldemort’s hips, Harry gave a soft cry. A part of him remembered this; a part of him revelled in it. After nine years as Voldemort semi-willing whore, how could his body ever forget the feel of the man above him, buried to the hilt inside of him, how could his body ever link these sensations to the fear and loathing and shame that had swallowed him whole for that one year, just one, where he had fought back against every rape, against every humiliation. His body remembered. His body craved, and though his mind screamed out in protest, his cock swelled and exploded, seed coating his stomach and Voldemort’s hand and the man grinned down at him, red eyes flashing and lips curled back mockingly. 

“Come home to me, pet,” the Dark Lord whispered. “You can’t stay gone forever. Eventually the spell will run out, and you’ll have to come home. To me.”

Harry’s eyes snapped open. His sheets were twisted around his legs, and his pants were sodden and sticky, but his arse wasn’t hurting and that alone was enough to calm him. It had been a dream. Nothing more than a dream. But as he sank back into his pillow he thought about the words from his dream. Was it possible, he thought? Had the **Vorago** spell had an expiry date or a counter spell? Could it suddenly wear off and Harry would find himself drawn unexpectedly back into 2008, or would the Voldemort of his past come back to Malfoy Manor and find Anthony Moore tied up on the floor, wandless, and Harry gone and conjure him back into the future? 

Harry threw himself out of his bed, the one between the kitchen and the living room in his small London flat, that he had never bothered to move out from. The pornographic images he had shown to Tom were still lying face down beneath “The Catcher in the Rye” and in the top drawer of the dresser they rested on was the Dark Arts book Voldemort had gifted him with before he escaped. This book contained the **Vorago** , and Harry flipped it open onto that page, the spine creased in just that one spot as it was all Harry had ever bothered to read from this book. But now, now it was time to research further. 

_XXX_

Same time. 

( **warning: sex** )

At Hogwarts, while Harry researched at home the spell that had started this new life, Tom was doing research of his own. Abraxas Malfoy lay spread out beneath him, flaxen hair spread like a halo around his flushed face. They were both naked, and Tom’s hands were pulling lightly on the other Slytherin’s swollen cock. 

Tom loved Harry, he did, but sometimes he wondered what it would be like to be on top. The last time he had ever implied such he had been nine-years-old and visiting Diagon Alley for the first time. And for the first time, Harry had hit him. He hadn’t done it since, well unless you counted light spanking during sex, but Tom didn’t, because Harry had really _hit_ him, just because he mentioned fucking Harry instead of the other way around. Tom knew Harry had bottomed for that other man, the one who had tied Harry up and taken photos; one of those photos was kept at the back of Tom’s photo album, and sometimes Tom ran a finger over the straps of black leather on Harry’s body and wondered if Harry would ever submit to him like that. 

He wanted to know what it was like. 

He wanted to know what it was Harry felt as he breeched Tom’s body, as he rode him and used him and came within him. Tom wanted to know what it would be like to be the one in charge, and he had wrote to Harry asking for permission to go through with his experiment. Harry, being the amazing, wonderful man that he was, had given Tom full permission to experience someone else, as long as Tom topped. No one but Harry would ever be allowed within Tom’s body. 

“Why can’t I-?” Abraxas trailed off as Tom pressed two fingers into him. “I don’t want to bottom!” He said petulantly, before gasping in surprise as Tom found his prostate. 

“Only Harry is allowed inside of me,” Tom told him. With a whispered spell, one that Tom didn’t really like because he much preferred the feel of Harry’s fingers preparing him, Abraxas was stretched and ready for him, and Tom pressed forward, sinking into the body beneath him that tensed and twisted as Tom stole its virginity, as Tom split him open. 

Abraxas cried out, and Tom knew it was from pain. He could remember how much his own first time had hurt, but Harry had been there, rubbing him and comforting him, and so Tom rubbed his fingers lightly across Abraxas’ hipbone and whispered, “it is ok. It’ll be ok.” 

And when they were done, Abraxas winced with every movement. 

( **end warnings** )

Tom lay back on the floor of the Astronomy Tower, looking up at the stars and feeling rather disappointed. There had been no flashing lights behind his eyes, his heart had pounded but it hadn’t been the same, there was no gasping, breathless feeling like he was about to die from the pleasure, and there had been no Harry there to comfort him. All in all, Tom decided, his experiment was a failure. Perhaps he would enjoy dominating Harry if the chance ever arose, but until then, he would be content to be Harry’s, and only Harry’s. 

“It’s wrong, you know.” Abraxas told him calmly as he redressed. 

Tom continued to lie there naked, thinking about Harry and how long there was left until he could see him again. His arsed clenched at the thought, butterflies came to life within his stomach, and he was suddenly so excited by the prospect of being taken again, unable to wait until May when his mock exams would be over and he could go home and throw himself into Harry’s waiting arms. 

“Hmm?” He asked, only half listening. 

“He shouldn’t touch you at all, whether he tops or bottoms. That’s abuse. Tom, he’s abusing you.” Abraxas reached forward to touch Tom’s shoulder lightly, but the boy smacked his hand away. 

“Don’t be ridiculous.” Tom chuckled lightly, ignoring the way Abraxas’ face had pinched with worry and the way the boy limped as he made his way out of the Astronomy Tower. He closed his eyes, comparing Abraxas to Harry, and knew that Harry would always be the winner. It wasn’t abuse, Tom knew, because abuse was wrong. And Harry was never wrong. 

_XXX_

May 16th 1943. 16 years old. 

Albus watched the boy. 

Tom was the same as he ever was, brilliant, attentive, but underneath it all there was a taste of darkness, a lust for power that admittedly was only kept in check by Mr Harry. Though, that didn’t make what Harry was doing right, not in the least. And Dumbledore worried for the boy, because surely, eventually, he would see that it wasn’t right, and Harry would no longer be there to keep him under control. 

“Tom, my boy, can we speak?” Dumbledore asked, striding towards the handsome teenager. 

Tom, who had just finished the last of his mock exams, had been standing with a group of fellow Slytherins. They were all fair-weather friends, he knew, those who had shunned him for his earlier years at Hogwarts and now pasted themselves to his side because he was the Heir of Slytherin and called him their Lord and desired to know how to please him. But only Abraxas had ever been granted the privilege to lie beneath him, pleasuring him with his body and mouth. But only Harry would ever truly be able to please him, and the sooner Albus spoke to him the sooner he could leave and see Harry again. 

But he dutifully followed his Professor to the Transfiguration classroom. He sat in one of the chairs, crossing his ankles beneath the desk and folding his hands above it, and Tom waited. 

He looked patient and polite, but Albus could see the intense dislike that Tom tried but failed to completely hide, swirling in his eyes. Tom had never quite forgiven him for that day five years ago when Dumbledore had suggested taking Tom away from Harry. He didn’t think Tom would appreciate it again now, but what kind of a person would he be if he didn’t even try? He had tried to contact the Aurors but according to them, no one lived at the flat the letter had arrived in, and there was no record of a Doctor Potter, a Mr Potter, or a Harry Potter of that approximate age anywhere in the Ministry records.4 He just didn’t exist and so there was nothing they could do about him. But Dumbledore could try and keep Tom away from the man, even if they couldn’t keep the man away from Tom. 

“My boy, I have to recommend that you remain at Hogwarts again this summer. It really would be beneficial to you, with the NEWTs fast approaching, and the Defence Professor looking for an apprentice. You could spend the summer trying the position out. I know you were interested in it a year ago.” 

“How do you know?” Tom asked curiously. He had wanted to teach, ever since he was thirteen and Harry had told him that he had once taught some of his friends in secret because their Professor was useless. Harry had been a rather good teacher, and Tom had hoped to be able to fill those shoes one day, but he didn’t want Dumbledore knowing his hopes and dreams. 

“I know many things, my boy. The walls talk.” 

Tom turned his head, and beside him upon the wall was a very familiar looking portrait. In fact, there was a matching one of this particular Wizard hanging in the Astronomy Tower, but Tom was sure it had been empty that night, very sure. 

Though, while many people had secret trysts at Hogwarts, it was never enough to warrant the attentions of someone other than your Head of House. That Dumbledore was speaking to him meant it had something to do with Harry, and Tom was half scared that the portrait _had_ heard him tell Abraxas about Harry touching him. But no, no, Tom consoled himself, because if it were wrong then Aurors would have been involved by now. But it was only Albus Dumbledore, and in the scheme of things he wasn’t really that important. So Tom pushed his chair back and stood up, glancing coldly at the frowning Professor. 

“I’m going home, sir. Please stop interfering with my life.” 

Dumbledore watched him go in silence. He couldn’t make Tom stay; he couldn’t force Tom to do anything. He wasn’t the boy’s legal guardian. He had considered adopting him, keeping him in the Wizarding world where he would be safe, but to do that he’d need the signature of Tom’s foster parents. He’d need Harry’s permission; Harry, who no one but Tom could seem to find. 

A man that apparently didn’t even exist.

 _XXX_

July 31st 1944. 17 years old. 

Harry had done his research. It was only a matter of time, he now knew, before the spell would start to break down. It could take anywhere up to twenty years to end completely, and Harry had already been in the past for thirteen of those years. It could happen at any time, without warning, during the next seven years. Harry would have no say in the matter, he would be taken by surprise, blindsided and dumped back into his future. He might even be in the middle of sex while it happened, or taken a dump, or any other manner of embarrassing things could be occurring as he was tossed across time. No, he needed to have control over this, and with that need for control at the forefront of his mind, he had decided he needed to be the one to decide when he would return home. 

There had been mentions of the counter-spell in several books he had managed to track down, but so far he hadn’t found the actual spell. But when he did, when he was ready, he would cast it himself, and wait fifty years for Tom to find him. 

But Tom would have to survive those fifty years. He would have to still be Tom, and while Harry knew the boy would have to age partially at least, there was no way he was engaging in activities of any kind with a man who looked every one of his seventy-plus years! 

Harry had found it, he’d stolen it, without having to kill the lonely old women, or frame her terrified house elf. The Locket was tucked away within his robe pocket, and Harry patted at the bulge lightly to reassure himself. Tom stood by his side, pale and silent, and he looked up at the large, sprawling mansion that took up most of their line of sight. 

“This is where my father lives?” Tom asked in a soft voice.

“Does it bother you that he had all of this land, this property, and you’ve grown up with nothing?” Harry asked, genuinely curious. He had been angry when he had seen his house at Godric’s Hollow. Someone surely could have fixed it up and he could have lived there with Sirius as his guardian. Instead, they had left it broken and ruined as a memorial and shipped him off to the Dursleys. He had been envious of the adjoining houses, all of which looked bright and cheerful and welcoming in comparison to Number 4 Privet Drive, and he had hated them all for one selfish second. 

“It makes me angry. He abandoned my mother to die, he abandoned me, but I didn’t grow up with nothing, Harry.” The seventeen year old smiled sadly at the only person who had ever seemed to love him. “I grew up with you. So let him have his riches and his bigotry. I have you. I don’t need anyone else.”

Harry gave the teenager a small smile before he took a deep breath and whispered, “I brought you here to kill them.” 

Tom threw himself backwards, gasping. The only thing that saved him from sprawling across the pebbled driveway was Harry’s hands on his shoulders. 

“What?” He hissed, looking horrified. Sure, as a child he had often imagined the other children and the staff at the orphanage dying slow, horrible deaths at his hands, but he had never once acted upon those desires. Even when Helen Doyle had died, it had been an accident and Tom had been distraught; though he had calmed considerably once he had realised that Harry wasn’t angry with him. 

“Think of it not as murder, but as karma. They deserve it, they deserve this for abandoning you, for hating you without even getting to know you first. They left you Tom, they didn’t want you, but I did. I do! And I want this too! You know we won’t always be together, right? Eventually they will manage to separate us, but if you do this,” Harry said, pulling the Locket from his pocket and thrusting it at Tom. “If you do this then we can find our way back to one another. We can be together forever then, Tom.”

“What is it?” Tom asked, reaching hesitantly out for the shinning Locket. 

“It used to belong to Salazar Slytherin. Your mother sold it while she was pregnant, to raise money to feed herself and thus you. She gave a way a part of her heritage, the only thing she owned that was worth anything, so she could provide for you, and yet your father has all this money and he couldn’t even offer you the most basic of things: food, shelter, warmth. There is a spell you could use to enchant the locket, you could make it into a Horcrux and place a part of your soul inside to keep it safe and no matter what happens we will always find our way back to each other.”

Tom’s fingers curled around the chain of the Locket. He looked up at Harry with wide eyes, and licked his lips nervously. “What do I have to do?”

“Kill them. Use the Killing Curse, I know that you know it Tom; I’ve seen you practising on the neighbours pets. The Curse will split your soul, and then focus on the locket, focus on pouring your soul into it. You’ll know it has worked when you are unable to open the locket again.” Tom pried the edges apart, and gasped at the painting of a serious looking man with a fuzzy, black beard. “If you love me, you’ll make the Horcrux,” Harry added, growing impatient with Tom’s silence. He had assumed that the boy would jump at the chance to inflict pain on someone else, but apparently his fear of Harry leaving him was still stronger than his desire to _hurt_. “I want this, Tom,” Harry added, leaning forward to brush their lips together. “I won’t leave you if you do this. This is to keep us together. Unless… Unless you don’t want to be together anymore?”

“Of course I do!” Tom shouted, cheeks flushing red. “You won’t be disappointed?” He asked then, in a meek whisper. Harry merely shook his head, and Tom, as desperate for approval as he ever was; still that pathetic four-year-old deep down inside, straightened his shoulders and turned resolutely towards the front doors of Riddle Manor. 

Harry left him to it. Walking into the village of Little Hangleton and purchasing two bars of chocolate, because Tom would definitely need them. When he came back, Tom was crouching on the front steps of the house, half-hidden in the shadows beneath the overhanging porch, and the Locket was hanging from his neck. Harry ignored him, stepping around him and into the house. Everyone was dead. Riddle Senior splayed in the doorway of the dining room presumably killed as he tried to escape. Tom’s grandparents were slumped on the table, sitting side by side, both as dead as each other. Harry smiled to himself, unwrapping one bar of chocolate and making his way back outside to Tom. 

“I’m so proud of you,” Harry whispered, green eyes glinting, as he handed the bar over. “Is there anything you’d like as a reward?”

“Make love to me,” Tom whispered, looking hopeful and sounding broken, and briefly Harry regretted his decision. But Tom needed to have a Horcrux, and this death was the only one Harry could justify. Strangers and helpless old women were innocent to him, but this family, these people were the reason Tom became Voldemort, the reason Harry suffered for years at his hands. They were the only ones who truly had it coming, in his mind; the only ones he could justifiably convince Tom to kill. 

Harry shook his head and released a soft sigh. Then he reached down to pull Tom to his feet, lacing their fingers together as he whispered, “anything you desire, my love.” He led Tom back into the house, into the dining room where three bodies watched them in silence as Harry began to strip. Against Tom’s better judgement, he closed his eyes and allowed Harry to lead him. 

_XXX_

October 18th 1944. 17 years old. 

“Tom! Tom!” Abraxas shouted, but Tom didn’t stop of slow down. The Locket still hung around his neck and it reeked of Dark magic and sin, but no matter what Abraxas did or said Tom wouldn’t take it off. Harry liked the sight of it upon him, you see, and Tom was happy as long as Harry was. “Tom you need to listen to me!”

“What?” The boy finally turned around, eyes narrowed and lips turned down. He placed his hands on his hips, and the golden Locket swung lightly on its chain, until Tom reached up and pressed it against his chest. 

“You can’t go back for Yule! You’re coming to my house and you have no choice in the matter. There, I’ve said it. I’ve already told my parents, and now they’re expecting you, and it’d be bad manners to change your mind at this point!”

“Harry will-” Tom began. 

“No. No more Harry! It’s always Harry this and Harry that with you, Tom. Can’t you understand that what he did to you was wrong! People like him deserve to go to prison! It was abuse. It was rape. It was _wrong_ , Tom!” Abraxas screamed at him, face flushed, and Tom remembered how the blonde had looked crying out beneath him years ago as he enjoyed topping. “ _It’s wrong_!”

“What is wrong? That I love him, that he loves me, Abraxas? Is this jealousy talking?” Tom asked, with a chuckle, not sure if he should be amused by his friend’s behaviour or not. 

“I’m not jealous. I’m worried. He shouldn’t have ever touched you like he did. Even Professor Dumbledore is worried about you, and I know the two of you don’t get on, but he’s been trying to keep you both apart for your own good. What he does to you… how long has it been going on?”

“I can barely remember when it started. But, Abraxas, it doesn’t feel wrong. It can’t be wrong, because Harry said-”

“Adults can be wrong too, Tom. And they lie. All of the time, sometimes to protect us and sometimes to hurt us, but you can’t always believe everything everyone else says.”

“Then how can I believe you?” Tom whispered. His eyes were closed, and he looked so hurt that Abraxas almost regretted this conversation, but it had to be done. Tom had to know. 

“Because I’m your friend.” Tom opened his mouth, probably to comment that Harry was his only friend, or his only love, or his only parent, but Abraxas cut in again. “And he is a paedophile who had been abusing you for years. So trust me.”

“I need to think about this. I need, I need to think.” Tom told him, forehead creased as he frowned. There would be research to do, things in the library that he could read that would disprove Abraxas’ words (or, more worryingly, prove them). This must have happened to other people before him, Tom thought. He can’t have been the only stupid, pathetic, gullible child in the whole world, right? There would be proof. Once he found it, Tom would decide what to do then. “I’ll come to your home for Yule,” he told his silent friend, and then he left the room, heading straight for the library. But before he started researching, he wrote to Harry, to ask if it was true and to tell him of his plans for Yule. 

When Yule passed and Harry still hadn’t replied to him, Tom knew he didn’t need to read more about psychopathology and grooming or conditioning to know the truth. Harry’s silence was all he needed. 

_XXX_

March 24th 1945. 18 years old. 

Harry looked down at the parchment on the table. The spell was written on it, there in front of him, within arm’s reach. It was almost over and he was so close to having this all end. The punch line was fast approaching, and once the spell had been cast Harry would know whether the last fourteen years had been worth it. He would either find himself right back where he started, Tom having gotten over the abuse and sworn revenge on Harry Potter, or he would land in a whole new world, where Tom had never managed to overcome his training, his desire to sexually submit himself to his foster father. Harry didn’t know which would happen, but he knew he’d prefer the latter option. 

His fingers traced the words on the parchment. 

Beside him, on the sofa, sat a backpack, filled with anything of importance that Harry was bringing with him. He picked it up, and slipped his arms through the straps and rolled his shoulders until the bag settled into place against his back. With his wand in his right hand, and the last letter Tom had written to him in his left, Harry knew that this was the moment. This was his last moment here, because when Tom returned that summer he would be too late. 

Harry would be gone. 

And then they’d all learn how well his plan had worked out. 

_XXX_

June 9th 1945. 18 years old. 

He was calling himself Lord Voldemort now. It was an anagram of his real name, the name his parents had given him, the name Harry had used as he pounded into his body, as Tom had clung naively to him. But he wasn’t that person anymore. He was a different person now, a stronger person, and it was time that Harry learnt he had crossed the _wrong_ person. 

Abraxas waited silently behind him, wand in hand, as Tom opened the door to Harry’s little flat. The Locket hung around his neck, sparkling in the light from the corridor, and then dulling as Tom stepped into the dark room. With a flick of his wand the lights turned on, but there was no one within the room. It was silent, and Tom searched through the kitchen, the bathroom, the bedroom, before finding himself standing stupidly once more in the living room with Abraxas at his back. 

There was a piece of parchment on the table, with a spell that Tom didn’t recognize written on it. Beside it, was the letter Tom had written, asking Harry if he really was a paedophile, the letter to which Harry had never replied. Lastly, there was one more letter, and with shaking fingers Tom picked it up. 

“ **Hello Tom,**

**It must be terrible of me, to not be there for you once you finally realised what I had done to you. But, I suppose, I’m a terrible person. I wouldn’t have done this if I wasn’t, now would i? But, really, you only have yourself to blame. That man, the one I told you about, who tied me up and hurt me for his pleasure, he was the man you would one day become if left unchecked. And the world does not need two such people… Though I suppose there are now him and me, so I have failed in that respect.**

**But I am confident that you will never be like us. It is too engrained in your very being, the disease to please, the need to submit, the wild clenching feeling you experience at the thought of someone above you or within you; I bet you’re feeling it now, remembering how it felt to let me take you, aren’t you?**

**I told you the world would conspire to tear us apart, but I know you, Tom, and I know you’ll horde that Horcrux close because deep down you can’t wait to see me again. I will return to you, in time, like I promised; and Lord Voldemort always keeps his promises, right? You’re standing there, reading my letter, and telling yourself you can’t wait to see me so that you can hurt me for hurting you, humiliate and punish me, like I humiliated you. To use me? But deep down, in a place inside of you where even you are afraid to look you know that you can’t wait for me to return because already you miss the feel of me pinning you down, buried to the hilt in your arse while you scream my name.**

**But don’t worry, my Tom. That day will come soon.**

**Your Harry**.” 

Abraxas took a step towards him, hands outstretched to comfort his friend, but Tom shoved them away. “I’ll show him,” the boy hissed, vowing revenge, “he’ll be sorry.”

But secretly Tom knew Harry was right. And there were tears escaping his eyes, because already Tom missed his friend and lover, and he wasn’t sure that his anger would be enough to keep him until Harry came home again. 

**XXX**

1 – Tom has one of those horrible winter birthdays, which means by the time he is old enough to go to school the year has already started. He’ll be 12 during the 2nd term of his 1st year, and so on, so when Tom graduates he will already be 18 (as opposed to Harry, who turned 18 after he graduated). 

2 – Young boys can get hard, they just cannot ejaculate until they reach puberty and sperm starts to be produced. Orgasm can also happen, as it is due to the stimulation of nerves, rather than the existence of sperm. My friend had a younger brother, and when he was 1 they could never get a nappy to fasten on him, because he was always erect. Apparently it was due to surges of adrenaline (but don’t take that at face value: it’s been a long time since she told me this). Puberty starts around 12 or 13 for boys, and as early as 8 for girls, but some are early bloomers. Like Tom, who apparently started ejaculating at 11! 

3 – I lost track of my maths at some point, and now I think the ages/Hogwarts years in the latter half of the chapter might be incorrect. But as I said, Tom has a difficult birthday, unlike Harry’s very easy to follow age-to-year ratio. 

4 – Harry would be around 40 now. I am assuming that since there was such a gap between the grandparents going to Hogwarts and having James, that they would have graduated and married by now, but would still be fairly young, and James doesn’t exist yet. So there’s Harry, who is 40, and there’s Harold Potter and his wife, in their late twenties.


	4. Part IV

**Words:** 3,363  
 **The Abyss 4/4**  
August 6th 2008. 

When Harry woke he knew the spell had worked. He was back in the future, back in Voldemort’s bed, in Voldemort’s mansion, with Voldemort’s arms around his waist. Harry tensed, shifting a little to see if he could break the Dark Lord’s hold and was very surprised to note that he didn’t hurt. 

Not at all. 

His arse didn’t burn or sting, and his back wasn’t whipped or beaten, and his arm was only numb from sleeping on it all night. So either Voldemort didn’t know that Harry had cast that spell, or he was saving Harry’s punishment for a later date, or his plan had actually worked. Harry was tempted to lean over the sleeping Dark Lord and check his arse, to press a finger inside and see how lose it was, or not, but then if his plan hadn’t worked and Voldemort woke up, Harry would be in for a world of pain. For fifteen years, Harry had escaped that world, and he knew he wasn’t prepared to re-enter it. He couldn’t face the pain again, especially not now, on his first day back. So he resisted the urge to examine his ‘master’, and he slipped out from between Voldemort’s arms and the sheets and off of the bed. 

Standing at the foot of the bed, Harry looked around for clothing. He was naked, as Voldemort always made him sleep, and again he was surprised to realize he had survived the night unmolested. He savoured the feelings, the lack of pain shooting up his spine, the fullness within him now compared to how empty he felt after Voldemort pulled out of him each time. He would prefer life to continue this way, he thought. 

He grabbed a pair of trousers from the trunk at the bottom of the bed and pulled them on. Harry threw on a robe as well, one that was hanging on the back of the door. Barefoot, and half dressed, Harry left his and Voldemort’s bedroom. 

“ _Tempus_ ,” he cast, followed by a spell to check the date. It was very early, and it was only August 6th. It was the day after Harry had performed the spell. He had arrived the very next day, but he knew the spell had worked, because when he stopped to look in a mirror there were extra lines upon his face brought forth by the extra fifteen years he had lived out in the past. He could remember every noise Tom made beneath him, remember the shape of his face and the line of his neck as he followed them with kisses, how his voice sounded, how he smelled and screamed and writhed, and how Harry’s stomach did flips whenever Tom said ‘I love you’. It had all been real, it hadn’t been a dream; but he was back so soon, so no wonder Voldemort hadn’t punished him yet. Anthony Moore had presumably escaped the room and when he realized Harry had turned up not even a full day later he had probably, cleverly, kept his mouth shut. 

Harry had been allowed free reign of the mansion once his first year as Voldemort’s whore was over. For the remaining nine years Harry had unwillingly succumbed, allowed himself to fall into the trap of ‘master’ and ‘slave’ and allow everyone else to believe it to be true. When he finally stopped resisting, Voldemort had finally begun to care about him. He allowed him more privileges, more benefits, he was trusted to a greater extent, gifted more often and abused less, and in his own way Voldemort had loved him. Much like Tom had loved him, and he had loved Tom. Did he love Voldemort, Harry wondered? He had missed him, and craved his touch, and after ten years of conditioning that was to be expected. He had dreamt of Voldemort several times after Tom had started Hogwarts, but each time he had woken up sweaty and sticky, but _afraid_. You didn’t fear someone you loved, did you? That wasn’t how it had worked. Tom had never loved any of the people he had nightmares about, after all, and neither had Voldemort. 

Perhaps Voldemort and Tom were more different than even Harry had considered, if he could love one and not the other after spending so much time alone together. Though, he reasoned, perhaps it was bottoming he hated, and not the man? 

_XXX_

There was a Death Eater meeting that night. 

Harry had been invited. He stood at the edge of the dais, covered with a long black robe with its hood drawn up over his lined face. He was twenty-eight years old, but he looked older and he felt _much_ older than that. He was actually forty-three, if you counted the years he had spent in the past, though he didn’t look _that_ old! Harry chuckled lightly as he thought about it. Those extra years brought him closer to Voldemort’s seventy-something, and further away from Tom’s lack of age. Which was more preferable, he wondered as Death Eaters began to file into the room. To be closer to equal in age to Voldemort, or to forever be Tom’s elder, his better? 

Harry was distracted from his thoughts as Voldemort raised his wand and turned to his audience. 

“Welcome, my friends,” he hissed, sounding as terrible as Voldemort always sounded. But Harry shuddered, the memories of Voldemort hissing at him in bed, tongue flickering over Harry’s flushed skin as he spoke and pleasured him, overwhelmed him, and he couldn’t help the rush of desire that shot through him suddenly. He thought his legs might buckle, and he reached out to press his hand to the wall at his back to steady him. 

“And are we not friends?” Voldemort continued, red eyes on Harry’s face, and mouth curving up into a knowing smirk. He knew exactly how he was affecting his lover. “But, correct me if I’m wrong, friends do not attack their friends, do they? Friends do not betray or harm their friends, or go behind their backs and steal and lie to their friends, do they?”

There was a chorus of ‘no, my Lord’s’ then, echoing from each mouth in the audience and around the room. Some Death Eaters shook their heads, some ducked their heads as if worried they might be the ones at fault. Harry caught one man swallowing heavily, hands shaking at his sides, and body trembling. When that man looked up, Harry couldn’t hold back his gasp. It was Anthony Moore, and he was staring at the Dark Lord in horror. Regardless of whether he had told Voldemort about the spell or not, one of them was in trouble, Harry knew. And Moore knew it too: his terror was so apparent. 

By Voldemort’s feet, Nagini’s tongue flicked out to taste the air, and she gave the snake equivalent of a chuckle before hissing, “ **He’s very afraid, Master. How will we punish him?** ” 

“ **However we see fit, my pet** ,” Voldemort answered, and his eyes left Moore and locked onto Harry’s own. Though his face was hidden by the shadow his hood created, his green eyes were bright enough to be seen, shining like beacons from his face and attracting Voldemort’s gaze. His wand was pointed at Harry and a curse flew towards him, taking the boy – man, really, he hadn’t been a boy for some time – by surprise and actually knocking him off his feet. 

Harry screamed. He writhed upon the floor, overcome by the strength of the curse. He had forgotten how this felt, how terrible and strong and cruel Voldemort could be. He had been away too long, and apparently it had been all for nothing, Harry thought as Voldemort cursed him once more. 

“We do not betray our friends, pet. I believe you owe our dear friend Anthony an apology.” Voldemort lowered his wand. The fingers of his free hand tapped against his lip calmly, slowly, even as his wand hand shook. It almost looked as if he was afraid, but Harry knew he wasn’t. The Voldemort of his time hadn’t known fear, hadn’t understood any emotion but anger and lust. And this was the Voldemort of his time, the Voldemort he had left behind, and failed to reform. Tom had apparently overcome Harry’s training. All of his hopes for a better future, all of his dreams and desires for freedom were unravelling before his eyes, and Harry stared resolutely at the shaking wand in Voldemort’s shaking hand and remembered all of the other times it had been used to hurt him. And all of the times it _would_ be used to hurt him still. 

“I am sorry,” he whispered, sounding hollow and broken. He had sounded like that for the first few months after his first year as Voldemort’s slave, before he had realized that fighting back won him resentment and pain, but giving in earned him trust and care and small measures of freedom. That was after he had screamed himself hoarse every night, fought and kicked and bitten, and was punished. But before he realized that Voldemort actually cared for him, in his own right, in some small way that could be manipulated by tears and soft, whispery, pleading. It was how he had sounded before he came up with his plan. But his plan was finished, useless, and he had nothing once again. 

Voldemort’s mouth turned down, a frown marring his attractive features. He watched Harry, concerned and confused, because he hadn’t seen Harry act like this in a very long while. And surely it couldn’t have been because he had been punished? Voldemort had punished Harry several times and the man had never reacted so hopelessly before. It was concerning. 

“Leave.” He hissed, bringing his wand up again to point at those too slow to follow his commands. The Death Eaters took the hint, filing from the throne room one after the other, until it was only Voldemort and Harry left within. The moment the door closed behind his followers, Voldemort cast a locking charm on it. Harry tensed at the sound, wondering what kind of punishment was coming now, trying not to imagine what could be so brutal and depraved that Voldemort wouldn’t let his followers see. 

“Harry, love, are you ok?” Voldemort asked. Surprised by the gentle tone of his voice, something Harry had only ever heard Tom speak with, breathy and needy and full of love, Harry looked up. Voldemort was kneeling in front of the throne that he had been sitting on during the meeting. “Did I hurt you? I’ve used stronger spells before and you’ve always glared and spat back at me. I appreciate you apologizing easily this once, for it helps save face with the Death Eaters: they don’t really appreciate you back-chatting their Lord of course, but you know I’d never ask you to change or argue with you. But… today? Are you alright? You know I had to punish you for attacking Anthony right? I had to, or they’d talk and question me! What kind of spell were you attempting, love, did it hurt you? Is that why you’re like this?” 

Harry slowly pushed himself to his feet. 

As Voldemort continued to speak, his voice grew softer and his face was kind and open with a concerned frown upon it, and Harry didn’t know what kind of game this was and that scared him. Was this his punishment? To believe that Voldemort was Tom, that his plan had worked because Voldemort must have known what spell that was and what Harry had planned to do with it, and then kick him while he was already down? To give him hope and then rip it all away from him cruelly?

“Harry? Come on,” Voldemort said, giving a small chuckle. “You know the rules.” Harry went tense, his feet sliding apart and his hands balling at his sides as he prepared himself for whatever attack was coming. “I hurt you in front of my Death Eaters if you misbehave. Then you get to punish me, and I make it up to you in private. Don’t you want the blowjob I offered you?” 

“Offered?” Harry whispered. Voldemort stood, making his way to Harry before taking him by the hand and leading him back to the throne. He pushed Harry down into the seat and fell to his knees once more before him. 

“Of course! Don’t you remember our conversation the day I left for that mission? The next time I punished you, I offered to suck you off to make it up to you.” Voldemort blushed and tilted his head to one side the way Tom had used to when they spoke about sex. 

Had the spell truly worked? Harry wondered, his chest tight in anticipation and something like relief. Had his plan really worked? 

“You wanted to tie me up and spank me,” Voldemort said, turning his face away completely. “But we, uh, we agreed on throne room sex instead. You really don’t remember? Harry, did Moore hurt you? Did you hit your head?” His hands came out and cupped Harry’s cheeks, ignoring the way his lover flinched at his touch, and ran his thumbs lightly over Harry’s flushed skin. “Are you angry with me?”

“No,” Harry said truthfully. “I’m confused.”

“About us? About this?” He turned his face away again, biting down on his bottom lip. “The spell would have taken you away from here. Were you trying to leave me? Do you not love me anymore?” Harry didn’t say anything. “Please don’t leave me. Never leave me. Whatever I’ve done, I won’t do it again, I’ll be better, I’ll try harder. I love you, Harry, please don’t leave me.” He sounded like Tom, after Harry had abandoned him at the orphanage during the week-long air-raid. He sounded so scared and desperate and pathetic, and Harry narrowed his eyes searching Voldemort’s face for the punchline. 

Voldemort’s hands were on Harry’s trousers then, clenched beneath his robes and pulling at the zipper of his pants. His trousers were pushed down. His robe was tugged out of the way. And Lord Voldemort bent down over him, mouth open and willing, and he took Harry’s cock into his mouth. Voldemort sucked and licked lightly until the organ grew hard, and then he hollowed his cheeks and bobbed his head faster, ignoring the hand Harry slipped into his hair and the small thrusts of Harry’s hips that almost choked him. 

Harry was moaning above him, and Voldemort chanced a glance up at the flushed, sweaty face and the wild mane of dark hair that was tangled around his head. Harry looked down on him, surprised and lustful, and Voldemort smiled around the cock in his mouth at the look that Harry sent him. 

Harry wasn’t going to leave him, he realized, sucking furiously. Harry wasn’t going to stop loving him, Voldemort told himself as the man came within his mouth, fingers knotted into his dark hair, and a cry of ‘Tom’ on his lips. 

“I love you, Tom.” Harry whispered, slumping back into the throne. 

Voldemort stood up. He wiped the back of his hand across his mouth, catching the few drops of come that had escaped, and reached down to unbutton his pants. “I love you too, my Harry.”

“What are you doing?” The younger Wizard asked, about to tuck his cock back into his trousers, until Voldemort’s hand grabbed his wrist and stopped him. 

“I believe we agreed to have throne room sex, did we not? And we do not lie to our friends,” Voldemort told him, voice pitch low and eye lashes fluttering. He pushed down his trousers and threw off his robe and stood before Harry Potter completely naked. “Or our lovers do we, my Harry?”

He made his way to the back of the throne, and leant over it. Harry glanced over his shoulder, eyes narrowed as he remembered the time Voldemort had fucked him over the back of a sofa in front of the Minister for Magic and several other prominent Ministry officials. Harry stood, pushing his trousers off completely and moving to stand behind Lord Voldemort. He was half tempted to call the Death Eaters back inside, to humiliate and expose the Dark Lord, but he didn’t. He had never taken Tom in front of an audience before, and even now he didn’t want to share this with anyone. 

Voldemort was all his. 

“You are mine,” Harry hissed, fingers probing at the elder man’s already prepared arse. Voldemort arched his back, pushing himself closer to Harry’s fingers, and then his cock as Harry replaced one with the other. 

“I’m yours,” the Dark Lord agreed, “your Tom. Harry’s Tom,” he panted as Harry thrust into him, over him, back pressed to chest and two sets of hands clenching and squeezing the top of the throne, linking their fingers together. 

They moved together, Harry remembering the last time he had taken Tom. The boy had been seventeen. He hadn’t come home again after his eighteenth birthday, and when he had graduated Hogwarts Harry had already gone back to the future. Voldemort rocked beneath him, moaning and begging for more, so much like Tom that Harry imagined no time had passed between them at all. It was still 1944 and Tom was still moaning for him in his only bedroom at the little flat on Vauxhall Road. 

Voldemort craved him, desired him; he always had and he always will. No amount of time passing would change that. But while Harry had been gone, he’d had his whores and his servants, but all of them submitted to him. Only Harry was allowed within him. He had been taught that from the very start and he had learnt his lesson well, but that didn’t change the fact that Harry had been gone, and while he had been gone Tom had missed and hated him in equal parts. But his anger hadn’t been enough, and when Harry Potter had first appeared at Hogwarts Voldemort hadn’t quite known who he was. But once the boy turned eighteen it was perfectly obvious that this Harry and _his_ Harry were one and the same. The final battle ended, and while the Dark Lord was victorious, that night ended with Voldemort on his hands and knees beneath the teenage saviour. 

Because, no matter how much time passed, he would forever be Mr Harry’s Tom. From the age of four until whenever he died, he would belong to Harry. And just like when he was eleven, Voldemort found that preferable than to be known as a ‘Riddle’; anything was better than that. But being Harry’s was even better. 

Voldemort smiled as he came down from his orgasm, reaching behind him to twist his fingers into Harry’s sweaty hair. Harry thrust twice more into him before coming with a groan, a garbled form of Tom’s name. 

They had missed this, they both realized. Whether it be days, or months, or years without the other, since touching the other, but they would always miss this thing between them. Harry had been trained by Voldemort to want this, to crave this and while that training had apparently never come to pass in this future Harry knew he that he would always belong to Lord Voldemort nonetheless. And Tom would forever be Harry’s, taught and conditioned to want Harry and no one but Harry. 

But that was the way Tom liked it. 

Harry smirked into the back of Voldemort’s neck, his cock soft and sated, pressing against Tom’s pale arse. His plan had worked. He had carried out the perfect vengeance and had gained the perfect result. His victim still loved him, and so Harry still got to keep his Tom. Excitement bubbled within his stomach, and his cock began to swell again. Without warning, Harry pushed back into Voldemort’s body, wringing a gasp of surprise from the elder Wizard. He thrust desperately, relishing the moans and groans of the Dark Lord, and he knew just as he now knew his plan had worked that he was finally home. 

He was free. 

**XXX**

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Thank you to everyone who read and reviewed, and who will review this chapter. Some of you might not have liked the way it ended, but that was always how I had the chapter planned out, so I’m sorry, but… C’est la vie. Thanks again.


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